Key Currency Exchange Rates for Friday, 11/12/21

Growth in the U.S. economy boomed in 2018, slowed in 2019, and turned south in 2020 when COVID-19 started to spread widely in March. In 2019, trucks shipped 72.5% of all domestic tonnage, including an increase of 366 million tons over 2018. Also, across the northern and southern borders, trucks moved three-quarters of the value of trade between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Compared with previous recessions, trucking fared far better than the overall economy as the recession in the first half of 2020 was concentrated in the much less freight intensive, services sector. At the start of 2020, the U.S. remained in the longest economic expansion on record with the unemployment rate at 50-year lows. In the three primary categories of freight—retail, manufacturing, and housing construction—only manufacturing was struggling from an industry-specific recession in 2019. In January, retail sales notched a record high, and construction on new homes surged to its highest level in over a decade, according to the Census Bureau. Even manufacturing showed signs that it bottomed out in 2019, as the Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index reported an expanding manufacturing sector in January and February after 5 months of contraction.

American Dollar to Canadian Dollar = 0.786948; American Dollar to Chinese Yuan = 0.152087; American Dollar to Euro = 1.185357; American Dollar to Japanese Yen = 0.008821; American Dollar to Mexican Peso = 0.051324.

American Trucking Associations’ advanced seasonally adjusted (SA) For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index decreased 6.3% in October after gaining 5.7% in September. In October, the index equaled 106.8 (2015=100) compared with 114 in September. “While there are indications that the economy is losing momentum, I believe October’s tonnage softness was more of a seasonal issue during a pandemic than anything else,” said ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello. “Typical seasonality is off this year and it was a reason why October was down so much. Not seasonally adjusted tonnage was down a fraction as much as normal over the last five years during September, leading to a big seasonally adjusted gain. However, that means October’s not seasonally adjusted tonnage grew less than half as much as it typically does, leading to a big drop in the seasonally adjusted figure. There are plenty of carriers still saying that tonnage, retail tonnage in particular, is good.”