Balanced Trade

Exports - imports = 0. That's when trade is balanced.

If a country's imports are the same as its exports, or vice versa, trade is balanced. The U.S. started to get truly dominant as a world power when it essentially loaned money to Europe to buy weapons from the U.S....which then kick-started a global automobile manufacturing (and then export) business that made us live on the receiving end of massive imports of cash, as our exports far exceeded our imports of...stuff.

Since then, the balance has slowly shifted the other direction, with China becoming the Big Dog Exporter to the world.