Less on Exports

By Fester:

Most of my recent thinking that exports will most likely decline in the near future has been intuitive.  Bulk commodities, raw materials and agricultural good demand has declined, prices have declined, and the US exports a lot of these types of goods, so we should expect a decline.  The US dollar has been strengthening for the past couple of quarters, so again, we should see a hit.  Heavy construction and transportation has seen a global demand slump, so again we should expect a decline in exports.  However this has all been intuitive. 

However Brad Setser has some data, and it is confirming weakening exports:

But the non-petrol goods deficit is now moving in the wrong direction. It increased from $29.3b in June to $35.6b in August. Non-petrol exports fell by $9.9b over the last two months, while non-petrol imports fell by “only” $3.7 billion. The sharp fall in exports shows up clearly in a chart showing “real” non-petrol goods exports and imports. Real data tries to show what is happening if changes in price are taken out of the equation — it is meant to measure the actual quantity of stuff that is traded.

Calculated Risk posted the export shipping volumes from Southern California ports, and it is declining as well.  This data does not show the value of exports, just the number of containers, but over the short run it is a good data set.

Ruh Rog --- this is not good as it is confirmation of the intuition that everything and everyone is slowing down.