John W. Snow says the U.S. economy is better off this year than last year.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Preparing for a meeting of its major economic allies, the Bush administration insisted Thursday that America’s record trade and budget deficits were not a threat to the global economy and predicted that U.S. job-creation troubles were nearing an end.

Treasury Secretary John Snow struck on upbeat tone a day before he and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan host a meeting of the Group of Seven major industrial nations. He said the U.S. economy is in far better shape than it was a year ago when analysts were worried that growth was so weak the United States might topple back into a double-dip recession.

“We’re on a very solid footing, our upward trend is strong,” Snow said, ticking off a number of healthy economic signs from strong GDP growth to rising exports and the creation of 308,000 payroll jobs in March, the biggest one-month gain in four years.

“I anticipate that this economy will be creating a lot more jobs in the coming months,” Snow said in a speech to the Bond Market Association in New York.

Democrats are trying to make an issue of the job loss that has occurred since President Bush took office. Even with the increase of 759,000 jobs over the last seven months, the number of jobs is still 1.84 million lower than when Bush took office in January 2001.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry is hoping to make Bush’s stewardship of the economy a major election issue, contending that Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts primarily went to the wealthy and left the government with record budget deficits.

Snow, however, insisted Thursday that the administration was correct to push through tax cuts to jump-start the economy. He said the administration had a credible plan for cutting this year’s projected $521 billion budget deficit in half over the next five years.

“The deficit is too large, but it is understandable and it is manageable,” he said.

The administration is facing criticism over its budget policies not only from Democrats but also from the International Monetary Fund, which argues that the huge U.S. budget deficit should be dealt with more quickly than five years to keep the deficit from driving up interest rates and slowing U.S. and global growth.

The discussions among G-7 finance officials will begin over dinner Friday night and continue Saturday morning. Those talks are occurring ahead of the spring meetings being held Saturday and Sunday of the 184-nation IMF and its sister lending organization, the World Bank.

Snow and Treasury Undersecretary John Taylor both said that the G-7 joint statement to be issued on Saturday would reflect no change in the group’s position on currencies from the statement issued by the G-7 in February. That statement urged flexibility in exchange rates, wording aimed at pushing China to allow its currency, currently tightly linked to the dollar, to float freely.

American manufacturers believe the Chinese policy has undervalued the yuan by 40 percent, giving that country a significant competitive advantage over American products.

IMF Acting Managing Director Ann Krueger told reporters Thursday that the current rebound in the global economy offered a chance not only for the United States but many other nations to address economic problems.

As usual, protest groups plan demonstrations against the World Bank and IMF, accusing the institutions of not doing enough to alleviate poverty.

“For us, the bottom line has to be how are the poorest people, how are the most vulnerable people in the world faring in the contest of policies that these institutions are promoting,” said Marie Dennis, director of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn did offer good news about efforts to reduce global poverty. Wolfensohn said the bank’s first annual review of the progress being made in cutting poverty in half by 2015 showed the that the goal is attainable.

But he said this was primarily because of strong economic growth in recent years in populous China and India. He said the World Bank’s review showed that many other regions of the world including Africa were falling behind.

The report said rich countries needed to deliver on the promises they made at a conference in Monterrey, Mexico, to ensure that all of the Millennium Development Goals, which cover such areas as education, health and clean water, can be achieved.

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On the Net:

International Monetary Fund: http://www.imf.org

World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org

AP-ES-04-22-04 1741EDT