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America's Trade Deficit With China Just Hit a New Record

• https://reason.com

The Trump administration's protectionist trade policies were supposed to reduce America's trade deficit with China—or, at least, that's what President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed—but new data shows that the gap between how much America imports from China and how much it exports to China hit a new record high at the end of 2018.

China's trade surplus with the U.S. was $323 billion in 2018, according to figures released this week by the Chinese government. That's a 17 percent increase from 2017. China said that its exports to the U.S. grew by 11.3 percent during 2018 (despite Trump's tariffs), while imports from the U.S. climbed by only 0.7 percent last year.

American data on trade was supposed to be released on January 8, but has been delayed due to the government shutdown. Alan Reynolds, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, says the Chinese numbers may actually underestimate the growth of the trade deficit during 2018 (China's numbers sometimes exclude goods that end up in the U.S. after passing through other countries), since American data from March through October shows a larger jump in American imports.

Source: Cato InstituteSource: Cato InstituteRegardless of the final figures for 2018, it's pretty clear that America's trade deficit with China has jumped upwards in the two years since Trump has been president.


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