@ The White House
In the morning, the President will receive the Presidential Daily Briefing in the Oval Office.
@ Wall Street
Trade Balance (Oct.). After three consecutive months of shrinkage, the foreign trade deficit should widen to $43.7 billion in October, from $43.1 billion in September. We expect the oil deficit to shrink (on lower import volumes), but the non-oil deficit to widen.
Exports had a strong September, and we are expecting some slippage this month, in part because we assume that last month's surge in exports of gold won't be repeated.
On a big-picture basis, export growth has slowed this year, but it is still running ahead of import growth, so trade boosted real GDP growth by 0.5 percentage point in the third quarter, and should boost it by 0.4 percentage point in the fourth. The big uncertainty for the future is how much the slowdown in global growth will hurt export growth in 2012.
