Trade Balance and Claims

Both trade numbers and claims came out better than expected: -$26B vs -$37B, and 654K vs 660K consensus. Exports actually grew moderately at $2B, while imports declined $8B month-on-month. On unadjusted seasonal basis balance of payments improved from -$44B to -$29B, and of that $11B came from Asian countries (6B from China, 2B from Japan). Chinese better be buying more cars. The claims data is not that interesting - it's basically flat from last week.