The next monthly trade report comes out November 9. Look for a temporary bump up in the deficit.

What it is: The outsize national credit-card bill that’s commonly known as the trade report tallies the value of the goods and services coming into and going out of the U.S. Thanks in part to skyrocketing oil prices, we consistently owe far more than we are owed.

History: The U.S. has tracked import-export data in one form or another since 1790. The Commerce Department (which encompasses the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau) has had the job since 1923. Few followed the monthly releases until the 1980s, when U.S. consumers went on a spending spree.

The status: In 2006, the U.S. owed its foreign creditors $758.5 billion, or 5.7 percent of gross domestic product. That is the highest trade deficit in the world. Just a decade ago, the deficit was still less than 2 percent of G.D.P.

The politics: Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke touched off the trade-deficit debate anew when he characterized our trade balance as “not sustainable” in a speech earlier this fall. Democrats traditionally say a growing deficit signals a shrinking job supply. Republicans point out that a bigger deficit usually means an expanding economy overall.

How it is calculated: Goods are tracked by Customs and analyzed by the Census Bureau, while services are in the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ bailiwick. Rather than extrapolate from samples, the report aggregates detailed receipts from every time cash has crossed American borders in a given month into about 50 pages of charts and tables.

The big news: With export demand surging and U.S. consumption slowing, the deficit’s growth isn’t what it used to be. In 2006, it grew about 6 percent; once, in the ’90s, growth hit nearly 80 percent.

What it doesn’t do: Unlike the employment report or Consumer Price Index, the trade report doesn’t provoke big market reactions. Its data are about two months old and are watched mainly by economists and currency traders looking for long-term trends. Volatile categories like aircraft exports and petroleum imports, however, can make monthly numbers hard to compare.

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