Over the month of December, the drop was 3.5%. The United States faced a plunge in American exports.
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The United States’ trade deficit fell by 3.5% in December but for the whole of 2020, it widened by 17.7% under the effect of a fall in American exports. The downturn reflects the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commerce Department said on Friday.
In 2020, the deficit reaches 678.74 billion dollars (606.48), the balance of goods recording a deficit of 915.79 billion and services a surplus of 237.05 billion. Regarding trade with China, a bone of contention under the Trump administration, the ministry said the deficit for goods alone fell 7.56% in December and nearly 10% over the year.
He did not provide data for trade in services, which does not allow an exact comparison with 2019 when the total deficit amounted to 307.84 billion. For its part, Beijing had announced that China’s surplus with the United States had further increased last year, which was presented as a final snub to Donald Trump who had made rebalancing trade a priority of his presidency.
According to Chinese customs, the 2020 trade surplus rose 7.1% to $ 316.9 billion with the United States. Last year, in the midst of a pandemic, demand for medical and electronic products for teleworking boosted Chinese exports to the United States.
But it is above all in the other direction that the restrictions penalized the United States, which could not export as many services to China as in previous years. Even before the pandemic, imports of goods from China had already declined due to the imposition of punitive tariffs on a myriad of Chinese products.
But far from reducing the total US trade deficit, this trade war had the effect of shifting trade flows. The result: the goods deficit with Mexico jumped 11.16% over the year as a whole, to $ 112.75 billion.
On the other hand, the pandemic put a halt to trade with Canada, the historic trading partner of the United States: the goods deficit thus fell by 44% to 14.97 billion.
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