In February, the Nation’s international trade deficit decreased to $43.0 billion from $44.5 billion in January.  Exports increased $1.6 billion to $186.0 billion, primarily due to an increase of $1.1 billion in petroleum exports.  Meanwhile imports increased $0.1 billion to $228.9, as a decrease of $2.0 billion in petroleum imports offset increases in nonpetroleum goods and services ($2.1 billion).

While the seasonally adjusted petroleum deficit decreased $3.1 billion to $21.2 billion, it is still higher than the December deficit of $18.6 billion.   The big petroleum highlight this month is in the not seasonally adjusted data, which shows the barrels of crude oil imported in February (205 million) were the lowest since March 1996 (202 million).

This month also marks the release of the 2010-2011 Profile of U.S. Importing and Exporting Companies.  If you aren’t familiar with it, the Profile is our annual release that combines FTD’s trade data with company information from the Census Business Register to provide company statistics on exporters and importers.   With the information from the Business Register, we are able to breakdown exports or imports by the size or industry of the companies doing the exporting or importing.   Using this company information along with what we gather in our trade data, we are able to provide data users with information such as how much value was imported by small (less than 100 employees) manufacturing companies from China.   Of course, this is just one example of many that you can find in the Profile, so please feel free to check out the release.

There is one slight change to the Profile from last year’s release.  In previous Profiles, Exhibit 6 has always shown trade totals by state.  This year, this exhibit also shows the export value of small- and medium-sized companies for each state, along with the total export value.