The enormous, humongous, vast, staggering, unbelievable, job-sucking, economy-sucking US trade deficit shrank to "only" $34.2 billion from a revised $44.1 billion in May. Exports of US goods and petroleum were up, imports of petroleum and consumer goods were down.
Exports, in particular oil, services, engines and telecommunications equipment, were up. This is good news. (Except for the climate.) Imports were down, especially petroleum (good news) and consumer goods. This is not so good news -- it likely means the economy maybe not doing all that well because low-wage and part-time jobs are replacing good jobs.
The trade deficit with China dropped to $26.6 billion in June, down from $27.9 billion in May. The largest single factos involved in this deficit with China is China's currency manipulation, which means the price of goods made there is lower in world markets than it would be without the manipulation.
Think about how many more US jobs there would be if we did not drain $34.2 billion from our economy in June, $26.6 billion of that just to China.
