Advance Report: International Trade in Goods

The International Trade in Goods contains seasonally adjusted and not-seasonally adjusted export and import goods data by 1-digit end-use categories and balance totals. It contains monthly data for the current year, as well as the full previous year. This Advance Report will not include services or trade in goods on a balance of payments basis.

The Advance Report is published monthly. The first release was on July 30, 2015. The Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) will continue to jointly release the full FT-900: U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT-900) report approximately 35 calendar days after the reference month ends. The new Advance Report will be published approximately a week sooner.

The Report will be released at 8:30 am on the release date.

According to the BEA the Advance Report will allow policymakers and private data users to make data-driven decisions sooner due to this high-level “snapshot” of trade in goods. The release also allows the BEA to incorporate export and import data from the third month of a quarter into the advance quarterly estimate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), thereby producing a more complete quarterly estimate. The advance GDP estimate offers the first glimpse of the broadest measure of how the U.S. economy is performing for any given quarter.

For more information there is a FAQ for the Advance Report.