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US suffers widest trade gap in 20 months
AFP - Thursday, August 12
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US suffers widest trade gap in 20 months
WASHINGTON (AFP) - – The US trade deficit widened sharply in June to the highest level in 20 months on waning exports and rising imports from China, triggering fresh growth fears in the world's largest economy.
The trade gap grew at the fastest monthly pace on record to reach 49.9 billion dollars, threatening to erode already slow US economic growth.
"This is spectacularly terrible," said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics, explaining that rising imports will eat into already anemic growth figures.
June's deficit surged past the 42.0-billion-dollar level seen in May, to become the largest trade gap since October 2008, in the depths of a brutal recession.
Imports, especially autos and consumer goods, increased three percent to 200.3 billion dollars in June while exports declined 1.3 percent to 150.5 billion dollars, the Commerce Department said.
Surging US imports from China formed the bulk of the increase.
This is likely to lead to more pressure on Beijing to speed up the appreciation of the yuan against the greenback -- a reason often cited by American lawmakers for the yawning gap with China.
The June deficit baffled both the US government and private economists.
It was about twice the amount forecast by the government in gross domestic product projections for the second quarter, published last month.
Most economists had expected the deficit to hit 42.2 billion dollars.
It is "bad news for real GDP growth in the US, which will be further reduced by the effects of rising imports," said Moody's Economy.com economist Christopher Cornell.
In fact, international trade may contribute "slightly negatively" to GDP growth in 2010, said Natixis economist Thomas Julien.
Some economists cut by half US growth in the second quarter of this year due to the much larger trade deficit and other weak data.
April-June growth could have been only 1.2 percent rather than the 2.4 percent estimated by the government, "placing the economy on even shakier ground than it seemed, and underlining why the Fed has shifted towards an easing bias," said economist Nigel Gault of IHS Global Insight.
The US Federal Reserve decided Tuesday to renew crisis-era measures that once pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into ailing markets, jolting the economy from recession.
The central bank downgraded its assessment of the health of the US economy, saying growth has slowed in recent months and warning that the pace of economic recovery was likely to be more modest than expected.
Traditionally, increasing US imports is seen as heralding greater demand from American consumers, who play a critical role in fueling local and global growth.
But markets were unimpressed with Wednesday's trade data, which helped Wall Street's blue-chip Dow index slip more than 200 points or two percent.
"Interestingly, the stock market did not respond positively to the jump in imports as an encouraging demand marker for the US," noted economist Jeffrey Rosen at Briefing.com.
"The lack of response to US import growth goes to show that China is being looked at more these days as the engine for global growth," he said.
The politically sensitive US goods deficit with China increased to 26.2 billion dollars in June from 22.3 billion the previous month.
US exports were virtually unchanged at 6.7 billion dollars, while imports increased 3.8 billion dollars to 32.9 billion dollars.
The US trade deficit with China has risen to 119 billion dollars between January and June. For the whole of last year, the deficit had jumped to 227 billion dollars.
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