{"id":34377,"date":"2019-03-06T16:23:27","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T16:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=34377"},"modified":"2019-03-06T16:23:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T16:23:27","slug":"us-trade-deficit-surges-to-10-year-high-record-gap-with-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=34377","title":{"rendered":"US trade deficit surges to 10-year high; record gap with China"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The US trade deficit surged to a 10-year high in 2018, with the politically sensitive shortfall with China hitting a record peak, despite the Trump administration slapping tariffs on a range of imported goods in an effort to shrink the gap.<\/p>\n

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that an 18.8 percent jump in the trade deficit in December had contributed to the $621bn shortfall last year. The 2018 deficit was the largest since 2008 and followed a $552.3bn gap in 2017.<\/p>\n

The trade deficit has deteriorated despite the White House’s protectionist trade policy, which President Donald Trump said is needed to shield manufacturers in the United States<\/a> from what he says is unfair foreign competition.<\/p>\n

The United States last year imposed tariffs on $250bn worth of goods imported from China<\/a>, with Beijing hitting back with duties on $11bn worth of American products, including soybeans and other commodities.<\/p>\n

Trump has delayed tariffs on $200bn worth of Chinese imports as negotiations<\/a> to resolve the eight-month trade war continue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The United States has also slapped duties on imported steel, aluminum, solar panels and washing machines. The goods trade deficit with China increased 11.6 percent to an all-time high of $419.2bn in 2018. The United States had record imports from 60 countries in 2018, led by China, Mexico and Germany. Imports of good hit a record $2.6tn last year.<\/p>\n

An acceleration in economic growth last year from Trump’s debt-funded tax cuts helped to boost the appetite for foreign goods.<\/p>\n

The December trade deficit of $59.8bn was the largest since October 2008 and overshot economists’ expectations for a $57.9bn shortfall, as exports fell for a third straight month and imports rebounded. The release of the December report was delayed by a 35-day partial shutdown of the government that ended on January 25.<\/p>\n

When adjusted for inflation, the goods trade deficit surged $10.0bn to a record $91.6bn in December. The jump in the so-called real goods trade deficit suggests that trade was probably a bigger drag on fourth-quarter gross domestic product than initially estimated by the government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The government reported last week that trade subtracted 0.22 percentage point from GDP growth in the fourth quarter. The economy grew at a 2.6 percent annualised rate in the October-December quarter, slowing from the third quarter’s brisk 3.4 percent pace.<\/p>\n

The downbeat trade data joined weak December retail sales, construction spending, housing starts and business spending on equipment reports in setting the economy on a low growth trajectory in the first quarter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US trade deficit surged to a 10-year high in 2018, with the politically sensitive shortfall with China hitting a record peak, despite the Trump administration slapping tariffs on a range of imported goods in an effort to shrink the gap. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that an 18.8 percent jump in the trade…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}