James P. Hoffa more than $750,000 in union assets had been used in Carey's 1996 reelection campaign. During the 1998 election Tom Leedham, then-director of the Teamsters Warehouse Division, campaigned against James P. Hoffa. Campaigning to unite the union, Hoffa won the election. After having lost narrowly in 1996 to Ron Carey, Hoffa's new role as president was considered by Teamster members as a chance to rebuild the union. Hoffa was re-elected in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 to five-year terms. "The first big test of the Hoffa administration" was the ratification in June 1999, of a four-year contract covering 13,000 carhaul members
Foreign trade of the Soviet Union that increased borrowing to pay for imports from the West would lead to dependence on international lending institutions. Trade between the United States and the Soviet Union averaged about 1 percent of total trade for both countries through the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet-American trade peaked in 1979 at US$4.5 billion, exactly 1 percent of total United States trade. The Soviet Union continuously ran a trade deficit with the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s, but from 1985 through 1987 the Soviet Union cut imports from the United States while maintaining its level of exports to balance trade between