Data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce shows that foreign trade in 2022 will increase significantly from the previous year, including bilateral trade with China, even as diplomatic relations between the world‘s two largest economies have deteriorated.
Despite record exports to 73 countries, the U.S. trade deficit stood at $1.19 trillion, up $101 billion from the previous year, as U.S. imports from 90 countries also hit record highs.
U.S. imports from China will reach $537 billion in 2022, up from $505 billion the previous year. U.S. exports to China hit a new high of $154 billion, up slightly from $151 billion the previous year. The U.S. trade deficit with China will be as high as $383 billion in 2022.
Hours after the Commerce Department released the data on Tuesday, President Biden delivered his State of the Union address, promising to strengthen domestic production capacity, use only U.S.-made raw materials in a number of infrastructure projects, and continue to focus on “winning trade with China.” compete”.
U.S.-China relations soured further after President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. military to shoot down what intelligence officials said was a Chinese spy balloon.
Tensions between the two countries had been raging for months before the balloon incident, with many U.S. officials calling for economic decoupling from China and the return of some key manufacturing to the United States. But while the Biden administration might be able to use the pre-emption clause to exclude Chinese construction materials from U.S. infrastructure projects, experts say there is little evidence of a decoupling of the U.S.-China economies as a whole.
On the other hand, Craig Allen, chairman of the US-China Business Council, told the Voice of America that the maintenance of strong US-China trade serves as the ballast stone for the relationship between the two countries.
In addition to factors related to U.S.-China relations, experts believe that the rise in the U.S. foreign trade deficit is largely due to the fact that the U.S. economy is stronger than the economies of many of its trading partners. A strong dollar makes foreign goods and services cheaper for Americans, while making them more expensive overseas.
While China is the largest source of U.S. imports in 2022, Canada and Mexico are the largest U.S. trading partners. Bilateral trade between the US and Canada reached US$794 billion last year, and US-Mexico trade was US$779 billion.
Japan is the fourth-largest trading partner of the United States, with trade between the two countries reaching $229 billion last year.
The two-way trade volume between the United States and the European Union last year was 903 billion US dollars, of which the trade volume with Germany was 220 billion US dollars.
Other important U.S. trading partners include South Korea ($187 billion), the United Kingdom ($141 billion), Vietnam ($139 billion), Taiwan ($136 billion), and India ($133 billion).