Tag Archives: US trade deficit

Regarding US trade, there are two key recent pieces of news and one major source of uncertainty.The first is the bilateral trade deficit with China, which rose to a new high: USD 393 billion in the twelve months to July, with imports of USD 529 billion, according to US customs data. The second is that Trump’s focus is increasingly on the imports of consumer electronics, as he has recently threatened to cover a major consumer electronics brand (and importer) with levies. Bizarrely, electronics...

NAFTA talks look likely to drag on, taking a backseat to US trade talks with China. At the end of the day, any re-negotiated treaty might include only relatively small changes.It is looking like House Speaker Paul Ryan’s deadline to have a final North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deal on his table, set for 17 May 2018 will not be met. This deadline was to meant to ensure that a new NAFTA deal could be approved during Congress’s ‘lame duck’ session -between the midterm elections in...

The escalating trade deficit with China comes at a politically sensitive time.The release of January trade data could not have been more topical, coming as it does shortly after the Trump Administration announced fresh tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, in the context of dangerously hardening trade rhetoric.The monthly US trade defict rose to USD 56.6bn in January, the highest since October 2008. And the politically-sensitive deficit with China rose to USD 36.0bn (non-seasonally...

The Trump administration is noticeably more focused on trade issues than on the ongoing deterioration in public finances.Second-quarter current account data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis showed once again a sizeable trade deficit, particularly in merchandise trade excluding energy. The energy boom driven by shale gas and light oil has reduced the US’s dependency on energy imports, in turn improving the headline current-account reading. But the US is still a net petroleum importer...