Oil hits US and Chinese trade balances

The US may be facing a slowdown but its trade deficit continues to widen. Reuters reports:

The U.S. trade deficit jumped in November to its highest level in 14 months as surging oil prices overpowered a ninth consecutive month of record exports, the Commerce Department said on Friday.

The trade gap widened 9.3 percent to $63.1 billion, the largest month-to-month gain in more than two years...

Although total imports of goods and services increased 3 percent in November to a record $205.4 billion, oil prices were mostly to blame for the spike in the deficit, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in an interview...

U.S. exports of goods and services hit a record $142.3 billion in November, but grew only 0.4 percent compared with about 1 percent in the prior two months -- suggesting a slowdown in foreign demand for U.S. goods despite the cheap dollar.

As Brad Setser highlights, the higher price of oil has also been a factor in moderating China's trade surplus. Reuters reports the Chinese trade data:

China's trade surplus for all of 2007 jumped to a record of more than $262 billion...

The surplus for December alone came in at $22.7 billion, below forecasts of $24.5 billion and well down on October's record $27.1 billion, while imports grew faster than exports for the third month in a row...

For 2007 as a whole, export growth slowed by 1.5 percentage points while import growth picked up by 0.9 percentage point, boosted by soaring prices for commodities such as oil and soybeans.