Here's an update of US imports and export behavior. The trade collapse remarked upon a couple of months ago is still in play.

Figure 1: Log goods import ex.-oil from NIPA (blue), and log goods exports ex.-agricultural goods (red), all in Ch.2000$, SAAR. NBER recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, GDP 2009Q1 preliminary release of 28 May 2009, NBER, and author's calculations.

The annualized drop in non-oil goods imports was 60.5% in 2009Q1 (log terms), while that of non-agricultural goods exports was 51.5% (both in log terms).

The misprediction by the standard (i.e., old fashioned) macroeconometric models (see [1]) documented in an earlier post persists. The model is given by:

Imp = α 0 + α 1 y + α 2 r

Where Imp is real imports, y is real income, and r is the real value of the dollar.

I estimate an error correction version of this

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