by Calculated Risk on 5/11/2005 08:30:00 AM

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released the monthly trade balance report today for March:

"... total March exports of $102.2 billion and imports of $157.2 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $55.0 billion, $5.6 billion less than the $60.6 billion in February, revised.

March exports were $1.5 billion more than February exports of $100.7 billion.

March imports were $4.1 billion less than February imports of $161.2 billion."

Note: all numbers are seasonally adjusted.

UPDATE: See also:
Kash, Angry Bear: US Imports: What and from Where?
Brad Setser: Good News. Trade deficit falls to $55 billion
Macroblog: The U.S. Current Account Deficit: How Big Is Sustainable?
UPDATE2: More from Kash: The US's Comparative Advantage
And pgl responds to the paper by Kouparitsas(recommended by macroblog): Pleasant Current Account Arithmetic (or was it fuzzy math)


Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the monthly trade balances for 2003, 2004 and 2005 and depicts the worsening year over year trade imbalance. The March trade deficit improved from February as exports increased $1.5 Billion and imports decreased $4.1 Billion.



The recent increase in oil prices had an impact on the March trade deficit. The average contract price for oil jumped from $36.85 in February to $41.14 in March. This is below the DOE estimate for the contract price and below the record for the import contract price of $41.79 in October.



This graph shows total petroleum imports per month for 2003, 2004 and the first three months of 2005. Petroleum imports were about 30% of the trade deficit or about 1.5% of GDP. Even without petroleum imports, the trade deficit would be close to 4% of GDP - a serious problem.


This is an unexpected improvement in the trade deficit and reminds us that this number is difficult to predict.