Awwal 08, 1432 / April 12, 2011, SPA -- U.S. companies sold fewer products overseas in February but the trade deficit still narrowed because of a big decline in oil imports, the Commerce Department said in a Tuesday report. The trade deficit fell 2.6 percent to $45.8 billion in February, the Commerce Department said. Exports, which had hit an all-time high in January, moved down 1.4 percent to $165.1 billion. Sales of U.S. autos, industrial machinery and food products all dropped. Imports fell 1.7 percent to $210.9 billion, reflecting a lower foreign oil bill and fewer imports of autos and computers. Trade is expected to be essentially neutral in terms of its impact on U.S. economic growth this year. For the first two months of this year, the trade deficit is running at an annual rate of $556.4 billion. Last year's imbalance totaled $495.7 billion, a 32.8 percent increase from 2009 when the recession cut deeply into America's demand for foreign goods. For February, the deficit with China declined 19 percent to $18.8 billion but still remained the largest trade gap the United States has with any country. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to press China this week to move faster to allow its currency to rise in value, hoping to get support for this view from other countries in discussions at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. For February, oil imports dropped 4.4 percent to $33.7 billion. That reflected a big decline in the volume of crude oil imports, which fell to the lowest level since February 1999-helping to offset a rise in the average price of a barrel of imported crude oil, which rose $2.83 to $87.17 per barrel, the highest level since October 2008. The drop in oil imports is expected to be temporary given that world oil prices have risen much higher since February, reflecting continuing political upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa. Oil was trading near $110 per barrel on Tuesday.
