Home WORLD NEWS US trade deficit soared to record $74.4bn in March

US trade deficit soared to record $74.4bn in March

by Bioreports
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The US economy is recovering much faster than the rest of the world, a reality that is playing out in trade numbers as the gap widens. Americans are starting to spend again, while US exporters are facing sluggish overseas demand in nations slower to recover.

The United States trade deficit surged to a record $74.4bn in March as an improving US economy drove purchases of imported foreign goods.

The deficit, the gap between what the US buys from abroad and what it sells to other countries, was 5.6 percent greater than the February gap of $70.5bn, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

Imports rose 6.3 percent to $274.5bn, while exports increased 6.6 percent to $200bn. The US imports so much more than it exports that in dollar terms, the rise in imports was greater.

The politically sensitive trade deficit with China rose 11.6 percent to $27.7bn which, as usual, was the largest deficit with any single country.

Through the first three months of this year, the US trade deficit totals $212.8bn, up 64.2 percent from the deficit during the same period last year, a time when the US economy was essentially shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.

The US recorded a deficit for all of 2020 of $681bn, the largest annual gap since 2008 as the coronavirus disrupted global commerce and confounded then-President Donald Trump’s “America First” policy.

The US economy is recovering much faster than the rest of the world and that is playing out in trade numbers as the gap widens. Americans are starting to spend again, while US exporters are facing sluggish overseas demand in nations slower to recover.

“Stronger US growth compared to trading partners will lead the trade deficit to grow in 2021,” said Oren Klachen, lead US economist. “US domestic demand will keep a strong pull on imports, thanks to improved health conditions, re-openings and historic fiscal expansion.”

During his four years in office, Trump pursued a get-tough trade strategy that employed punitive tariffs on other country’s products as a way of wiping out the US’s trade deficits with the rest of the world and restoring millions of lost manufacturing jobs.

Trump sought to narrow the trade gap by imposing tariffs on imported goods on a scale not seen since the trade wars of the 1930s that contributed to pushing the US and the rest of the world into a Great Depression.

Trump’s efforts failed to alter trade imbalances and angered US allies along with competitors such as China. So far, however, the Biden administration has not rolled back the Trump policies.

Some analysts believe that President Joe Biden is proceeding with caution because reversing all of Trump’s policies could heighten risks for a Democrat who is close to unions. Organised labour has long complained about the US’s pre-Trump free trade policies.

For March, the US’s surplus in services trade, items such as airline flights and consulting fees, shrank to a new decade low of $17.1bn, a drop that analysts blamed on COVID-19 restrictions that have limited tourism. Normally, the US is able to reduce its overall deficit by a larger amount thanks to larger surpluses in services trade.

The deficit in goods totalled a record $91.6bn in March, up from a March goods deficit of $87.9bn.

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