US September trade deficit widest in over two years

The world's biggest economy saw its trade gap jump 19.2 percent to $84.4 billion, said the Department of Commerce, with imports growing by 3.0 percent. The expansion was significantly more than a market consensus of $74.0 billion forecast by Briefing.com. The rise in imports came ahead of the year-end holiday season, and may be due to companies stocking up in anticipation of a dockworkers' strike. "We should see some payback over the next couple of months," Ryan Sweet of Oxford Economics told AFP.