By PAUL WISEMANThe Associated Press
\nWed., Feb. 6, 2019<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON\u2014The U.S. trade deficit fell 11.5 per cent in November to the lowest level since June.<\/p>\n
The Commerce Department said Wednesday the gap between what the United States sells and what it buys from other countries dropped to $49.3 billion (U.S.) from a revised $55.7 billion in October. American exports fell 0.6 per cent to $209.9 billion, but imports fell faster, dropping 2.9 per cent to $259.2 billion.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to slash America\u2019s trade deficit with the rest of the world and has imposed import taxes on foreign steel, aluminum and Chinese products.
\nU.S. President Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to slash America\u2019s trade deficit with the rest of the world and has imposed import taxes on foreign steel, aluminum and Chinese products. (KHAM \/ POOL PHOTO \/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)
\nThe politically sensitive deficit with China in the trade of goods such as cars and cellphones fell 7.3 per cent to $35.4 billion.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to slash America\u2019s trade deficit with the rest of the world and has imposed import taxes on foreign steel, aluminum and Chinese products.<\/p>\n
But the January-November 2018 deficit was still up 9 per cent from a year earlier.<\/p>\n
America ran a $71.6 billion deficit in the trade of goods, down from $78.3 billion in October. But it ran a surplus of $22.3 billion in trade of services such as banking and tourism, down from $22.6 billion in October.<\/p>\n
Trump sees the lopsided trade numbers as a sign of U.S. economic weakness and as the result of bad trade deals and abusive practices by U.S. trading partners, especially China.<\/p>\n
Mainstream economists view trade deficits as the result of an economic reality unlikely to yield to changes in trade policy: Americans buy more than they produce, and imports fill the gap. The strong U.S. economy also encourages Americans to buy more foreign products.<\/p>\n
U.S. exports are also hurt by the American dollar\u2019s role as the world\u2019s currency. The dollar is usually in high demand because it is used in so many global transactions. That means the dollar is persistently strong, raising prices of U.S. products and putting American companies at a disadvantage in foreign markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By PAUL WISEMANThe Associated Press Wed., Feb. 6, 2019 WASHINGTON\u2014The U.S. trade deficit fell 11.5 per cent in November to the lowest level since June. The Commerce Department said Wednesday the gap between what the United States sells and what it buys from other countries dropped to $49.3 billion (U.S.) from a revised $55.7 billion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canada-news","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1012,"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions\/1012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sucantv.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}