Areas of concern in a U.S. economic strength Stories You Might Like U.S. stock futures improve along with claims data Portugal exports up 15.7% in Oct

The news that the U.S. trade gap has dropped for a fourth consecutive month sounds good until one looks under the hood and sees both imports and exports declining.

More worrying is that exports dropped 0.8% and that the 1% drop in imports was tied purely to oil price declines which have now reversed

And the signs from Europe are worrying, even though they don’t leap out of the report.

Exports of goods to the European Union rose to $28.64 billion in October from $28.39 billion in September. That’s just goods, not services — services data by country aren’t provided — and it’s not seasonally adjusted.

But the three-month moving average shows the year-on-year growth rate of exports to Europe slowing to 9.4% in October from 19% in September. That’s the lowest growth rate since May 2010.

The seasonally adjusted data for exports to the whole world also show this slowing — down to 12.3% growth in October, the worst since December 2009.

Growth of 9% to Europe and 12% for the world, of course, sounds terrific, and it shows that exports are one of the key reasons the U.S. economy has proved resilient and hasn’t backslid into contraction this year.

But that’s just the point: One of the U.S. economy’s core strengths is starting to wobble. To reverse a popular saying, the question that will head into next year is if the U.S. will catch a cold from the rest of the world’s sneezing.