The US trade deficit widened sharply in November to a record $60.3 billion (€45.5 million), renewing pressure on the ailing dollar and causing economists to scale back their forecasts for economic growth.

The gap between imports and exports grew by $4.3 billion over the month and has now risen by almost $10 billion since September.

The main culprits were a surge in the volume of imports of oil products and a decline in demand for US capital goods. Economists moved to downgrade their expectations for growth in the final three months of last year.

JP Morgan said the higher deficit was likely to cut fourth quarter growth from an annualised 4 per cent to 3.5 per cent.

Mr Ian Morris, US economist at HSBC, said the damage could be even greater and could lower growth to below 3 per cent.

"Everything went wrong in this report," he said. "A larger deficit could mean more difficulty in attracting a larger capital inflow, which drives the dollar down and rates up.

This is in addition to taking a large chunk out of gross domestic product growth." The dollar lurched lower after the data, declining almost 2 cents against the euro to $1.329. Sterling capitalised on the dollar's woes, rising from $1.87 to $1.893.

The dollar had moved higher over the past week, supported by bullish indications from the Federal Reserve and expectations of higher interest rates.

Yesterday's data shifted the focus of financial markets away from the strong growth outlook back to the long-term structural imbalances.

Mr Paul Meggyesi, a senior currency strategist at JPMorgan, said: "This provides a timely reality check. It is a reminder of the forces that have been driving the dollar lower for the past three years." Over the month exports dipped 2.3 per cent while imports rose by 1.3 per cent.

Compared with the previous year, exports were up 6 per cent, but this was outpaced by a 19.8 per cent rise in imports.

Many analysts thought the slide in the dollar had started to help narrow the deficit by boosting the competitiveness of US goods. These figures damped such hopes.

Mr Nigel Gault, head US economist at Global Insight, the consultancy, said: "The real shock here was that exports did so badly." While overall exports fell by 2.3 per cent, exports of goods slid by 3.8 per cent, with weakness in most categories of goods.