NEW YORK, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- The soaring U.S. trade deficit, which hit a record $60.3 billion in November, is putting fresh downward pressure on the nation's currency.
Rising oil imports and falling demand for U.S. capital goods increased the gap between imports and exports by $4.3 billion over the month. Since September, the deficit has risen by almost $10 billion.
As a result, economists are downgrading growth expectations for final three months of last year and predicting further erosion in the value of the dollar, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
JP Morgan cut its growth estimate from an annualized 4 percent to 3.5 percent.
"The real shock here was that exports did so badly," said Nigel Gault, head U.S. economist at Global Insight, a consulting group.
