Trade Deficit

WASHINGTON — The U.S. trade deficit widened sharply in January, driven higher by record imports of autos, capital goods and food, government data showed. The trade gap expanded 4.3% in January to $52.6 billion from $50.4 billion in December, the Commerce Department said Friday. This is the largest monthly differential between imports and exports since October 2008 and came in much bigger than expected. Analysts surveyed by MarketWatch had predicted that the deficit would reach $49 billion.

The American Trucking Assn. said that it expects the industry to haul more freight than it did last year, but it added that the pace of growth would probably be slower than it was in 2010 and 2011. The association is the nation's biggest trade organization for the trucking industry, with affiliates in each of the 50 states. In 2010 and 2011, freight tonnage grew by 5.8%, but this year the Trucking Assn. is expecting growth of slightly less than 3%. Bob Costello, chief economist for the ATA said that the trucking industry's performance during the first quarter "was reflective of an economy that is growing, but growing moderately.

Using a machine that looks like a giant trash compactor, a company in Wilmington is doing its bit to make a dent in the foreign trade deficit. Orient Hay Cube Distributors has developed a machine that it considers state of the art in the rather specialized business of putting hay into shipping crates for transport to the Far East.

Economists sharply raised their forecast for first-quarter economic growth after news of an unexpectedly big drop in the nation's trade deficit in February. The Commerce Department reported Thursday the trade deficit narrowed in February to $46 billion from $52.5 billion in January. Most of the decline was due to a sharper-than-expected 2.7% falloff in imports, much of that from China. U.S. exports in February was up a tiny 0.1%. Analysts said the trade gap was likely to turn up in March as Chinese production and shipments resumed after the Lunar New Year holiday in February.

Trade with China may be helping to lift Colombia's economy to new heights, but don't ask Alvaro Hincapie to sing the Asian dragon's praises. Legal and illegal Chinese textile imports have clobbered Enka, the Medellin textile company he runs, and forced him to refocus operations to rely more on recycled, environmentally friendly threads. Industrywide, Colombia's textile and apparel makers saw sales slump 13% to $6.1 billion last year from $7 billion in 2008 ? and there is little sign the slide is ending.

Economists sharply raised their forecast for first-quarter economic growth after news of an unexpectedly big drop in the nation's trade deficit in February. The Commerce Department reported Thursday the trade deficit narrowed in February to $46 billion from $52.5 billion in January. Most of the decline was due to a sharper-than-expected 2.7% falloff in imports, much of that from China. U.S. exports in February was up a tiny 0.1%. Analysts said the trade gap was likely to turn up in March as Chinese production and shipments resumed after the Lunar New Year holiday in February.

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed for a fourth straight month in November, government data showed Thursday, confounding economists who had expected an increase. The nation's trade deficit contracted 0.3% to $38.3 billion from a revised $38.4 billion in October, the Commerce Department said, making it the smallest trade gap since January 2010. Analysts surveyed by MarketWatch had expected the deficit to widen to $40.3 billion. The trade deficit shrank 13.9% in October. The last time the deficit shrank four months in a row was in late 2008 and early 2009.

Europe's prolonged debt crisis is starting to take bite out of American exports, a troubling sign for domestic manufacturers and the broader economy. The government said Friday that the U.S. trade deficit jumped 10% in November from the prior month, to $47.8 billion, the highest level since June. The unexpectedly big increase came largely from a rise in oil imports. But there was also a sharp drop in U.S. exports to Europe and smaller declines to Asia and South America, where economies also are slowing a bit. American shipments of capital goods, industrial supplies and cars all dipped over the month.

President Obama on Thursday launched an effort to rebuild the nation's long-term economic strength by sharply boosting exports, and he got a lift from government data showing that the trade deficit narrowed unexpectedly in January. But the trade report also showed that, although imports declined, U.S. exports lost momentum as well, slipping for the first time since last spring. The mixed signals pointed up just how great the challenge will be to meet the president's goal of doubling exports in five years, which was last accomplished in the 1970s when global competition was less intense.

In a sign that Americans are persisting in the risky habit of buying more than they sell in the global economy, the U.S. trade deficit jumped unexpectedly in May to the highest level since November 2008. That prompted some analysts to cut back their forecasts of how much the economy would grow in the second quarter and to warn that the underlying imbalance posed a threat to the nation's long-term prosperity and economic strength. "Definitely the weakness in trade through May suggests less momentum in the economy," said Shawn DuBravac, chief economist for the Consumer Electronics Assn.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. trade deficit widened sharply in January, driven higher by record imports of autos, capital goods and food, government data showed. The trade gap expanded 4.3% in January to $52.6 billion from $50.4 billion in December, the Commerce Department said Friday. This is the largest monthly differential between imports and exports since October 2008 and came in much bigger than expected. Analysts surveyed by MarketWatch had predicted that the deficit would reach $49 billion.

China's vice president received a warmer welcome at an economic forum in Los Angeles on Friday than he seemed to get in Washington earlier in the week. But beneath the glad-handing surface were some of the same tensions that were on display when Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping met with his U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, on Tuesday. Biden took China to task on several fronts, including trade policies and intellectual property rights. Xi appeared in downtown Los Angeles with state and federal officials, including Gov. Jerry Brown and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and they all pledged economic cooperation.

California is at risk of losing more than 70,000 jobs in the U.S. auto supply chain unless China curtails its “predatory” trading practices, the Alliance for American Manufacturing said Tuesday. The left-leaning alliance announced the release of three reports Tuesday morning that collectively accuse China of issuing illegal subsidies, rigging its tax laws and manipulating its currency. The reports conclude that these practices that have killed an estimated 400,000 U.S. jobs since 2000 and put 1.6 million more at risk in the future.

Europe's prolonged debt crisis is starting to take bite out of American exports, a troubling sign for domestic manufacturers and the broader economy. The government said Friday that the U.S. trade deficit jumped 10% in November from the prior month, to $47.8 billion, the highest level since June. The unexpectedly big increase came largely from a rise in oil imports. But there was also a sharp drop in U.S. exports to Europe and smaller declines to Asia and South America, where economies also are slowing a bit. American shipments of capital goods, industrial supplies and cars all dipped over the month.

Standard & Poor's is set to downgrade the credit ratings of France and other Eurozone countries, France's finance minister confirmed Friday. France, which is Europe's second-largest economy behind Germany, will be lowered one notch to AA-plus from its previous stellar AAA rating. France will then have the same credit rating as the U.S., which was downgraded by S&P in August . Standard & Poor's plan, announced late Friday afternoon on French television by the nation's finance minister, Francois Baroin, was somewhat expected since S&P warned in December that it might cut the ratings.

The U.S. economy, which has been picking up steam recently, got another boost from the latest trade numbers. The Commerce Department said Friday that the nation's trade deficit in October narrowed to $43.5 billion, the lowest level since December 2010. The improvement, from an upwardly revised deficit of $44.2 billion in September, was due almost entirely to higher exports and lower imports of petroleum, a volatile category. Still, the smaller trade shortfall prompted analysts to mark up their projections for gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity.

An unexpectedly sharp jump in the U.S. trade deficit for June to its highest level in three years signals more trouble ahead for jobs, income and economic growth. With the global economy sagging, demand appears to be weakening for American manufactured goods — one of the few bright spots left in the nation's recovery efforts — as a drop in exports far exceeded a decline in imports. The trade imbalance rose 4.4% to $53.1 billion in June, the widest since October 2008, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

The good news for the U.S. economy is that a double-dip recession looks increasingly remote. The bad news: It can't seem to get out of first gear. Employers added just 80,000 jobs in October, about 20,000 less than economists expected, and far fewer than the 125,000 jobs needed to keep pace with population growth and younger adults joining the labor force. The unemployment rate slipped to 9% from 9.1% the month before, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday, but the rate is still double what it was five years ago. "We are on the path to recovery, but to regain the 8.5 million jobs that we lost is going to be a long way down the road," said Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University.

After years of partisan wrangling that has blocked Congress from taking major steps to boost the flagging economy, Republicans and Democrats finally found something they could agree on last week when they approved long-stalled free-trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia. It's a big victory for the Obama administration, the U.S. economy (which is expected to benefit from the pacts to the tune of $12 billion a year added to the gross domestic product) and for Congress itself, whose reputation as a do-nothing pack of squabblers has caused its approval ratings to plummet.