China claims its exporters had a good September, but everyone knows how dicey official Chinese statistics can be. According to Panjiva, which monitors all shipping manifests to see how many companies are exporting goods to the United States, things aren’t so rosey. Granted this isn’t just China, but we still think it’s meaningful to compare and contrast, at least.

Panjiva blog: The word from Panjiva’s research team: global trade activity declined in September.  Specifically, from August to September, there was a 5% decline in the number of global manufacturers shipping to the U.S. market. Similarly, there was a 4% decline in the number of U.S. companies receiving waterborne shipments from global manufacturers.

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These declines are the steepest we’ve seen since February, when global trade hit bottom, and would seem to confirm that American businesses have modest expectations for the coming holiday shopping season.

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