Trade Deficit Explodes, GDP Revisions Sharply Lower

The recent Obama initiative to push exports to double in 5 years has started off, just like all other administration efforts, as an abysmal failure. The June balance of trade plunged to ($49.9) billion, on expectations of ($42.1) billion - a surge of $8 billion compared to May's ($42) billion. This number was the highest since October 2008, and just $28 billion away from the all time record. At least we now know who the mystery "importer", that extracted Europe from the economic abyss, was in the past 3 months. And courtesy of the Current Account equation, what this surge in deficits means is that Q1 GDP will now likely be revised to well under 1.0%! As JPM reported earlier, revision in BEA assumptions on wholesale and non-durable inventory alone will push Q1 GDP from the official 2.4% to 1.3%. Today's data is the last nail in the Q2 GDP number, and according to analyst will take out another 0.4% from the GDP, meaning that when all is said and done, Q2 GDP will come out to sub-1%. And this was in a quarter when the stimulus was still expected to be boosting GDP. We now fully expect that the final reports of Q3 and Q4 GDP, some time in 2011, to be solidly negative, as the economy is now officially contracting once again. In other words, the Double Dip is (even more) official.