The Nation’s international trade deficit in goods and services increased to $36.4 billion in November from $33.2 billion (revised) in October. The increase in the deficit occurred as exports rose less than imports. The rise in exports was the seventh consecutive monthly increase.

U.S. exports to China in November ($7.3 billion) were a record high, beating the record set last month ($6.9 billion) by $469 million. While the last two months have been record highs the year-to-date exports to China ($61.2 billion) are still down from last year ($64.6 billion). Check back next month to see if December exports manage to climb high enough to make the 2009 figures beat 2008! Below are a few commodities driving the export figures:

• Soybeans have more than accounted for the increase in exports to China for the last two months. Soybean exports to China totaled $2.0 billion this month, 27% of U.S. total exports to China. This increase is being caused in part by a shortage of soybeans in Argentina due to a drought.

• Semiconductor exports to China are down by $1.5 billion so far this year, accounting for almost half of the year-to-date decrease in exports to China. Semiconductor exports to China are still considerable totaling $4.6 billion through November; they are the second largest commodity export to China, behind soybeans with $7.5 billion. Aircraft is the third largest export to China at $4.5 billion.

You can find more commodity by country detail our website.

Make sure to check out the monthly Press Highlights and Congressional Highlights that are up on our website for more interesting facts on the balance, imports and exports for the current month.

The sheer amount and frequency of trade data can make it overwhelming to casual data users, but there are a lot of interesting facts like these in the data every month. We hope to continue bringing them to you, and hope to inspire you to dig though the data to find something that interests you. Feel free to drop a comment with your own interesting data points, or let us know what you would like us to highlight in future posts.