Commerce Secretary Gary Locke introduced the National Export Initiative yesterday.  The new plan calls for increasing the amount of export financing available to small and mid-sized businesses to $6 billion in the next year--up from $4 billion.  The goal is to double exports over the next five years.  Sounds like quite a task, but as Menzie Chinn points out, it is not without historical precedent.  And he shows us this graph at Econbrowser:

Chinn shows us that nominal exports have doubled twice in the last forty years, and almost doubled twice more (1990 and 2008).  He writes that the key factors, "from a macro perspective," are "(i) the price level of exports, (ii) the quantity of exports."  Chinn analyzes these factors further in his Econbrowser post.  Read it here.