There has already been a fair amount (of very good) commentary about yesterday's trade report for October. Here's the summary picture from the Census:
Calculated Risk points out what you can see in the picture above: "The October record was the result of the significant increase in imports and only a small increase in exports." Menzie Chinn characterizes the report as coming in "at the tail ends of the distribution of expectations." Kash has a nice breakdown of the deficit by country. General Glut says "Wow, That's a big one." Brad DeLong says "it's not good news." And Brad Setser thinks it's just going to get worse.
But only the Skeptical Spectator (and the Nattering Naybob, if you look hard into the Market Soapbox) took note of the silver lining. From Monsters and Critics:
Cheaper oil helped cut U.S. import prices last month by 1.7 percent, and export prices all fell dropping 0.9 percent, the biggest such decline in 14 years.
The Labor Department Wednesday said November`s decline in import prices followed a 0.3 percent rise in October and was the largest one-month drop since April 2003...
That prompted this, from Bloomberg, via The New York Times:
The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index reached a four-year high yesterday as a drop in import prices fueled speculation that the Federal Reserve might soon stop raising interest rates.
I, of course, cannot speak to that, but it does suggest we might finally be getting some pressure off those nasty headline inflation numbers we've been seeing.