The Census Bureau on Tuesday reported that the US trade deficit for goods and services rose above USD 100 billion again, the first time since March 2025, right before the so-called Liberation Day.
So, after all the tariff drama, the trade deficit problem has not been solved and has even been getting worse?
Yes, but with an asterisk. That asterisk is AI-related imports.
My preferred way to look at the US trade balance is using year-to-date accumulated figures, as month-to-month figures can easily be skewed by some tariffs or trade policies. And here you can see that the 2026 line (red) is tilting downward, i.e. the trade deficit has been worsening at an increasing pace.
What was happening? The increasing amount of computers, peripherals and semiconductors imports, a proxy for the imported equipment and hardware for AI datacenter buildout, is definitely one of the contributing factors.
This import category, driven by the AI investment boom, now takes up a share of close to 23% of total US imports in August, [1] continuing a rapidly rising trend.
Notably, if we take out nonmonetary gold[2] and computers, peripherals and semiconductors imports from the total, the accumulated trade deficit this year was actually lower than in previous years.
This is because in nominal terms, US year-to-date accumulated exports were higher than in previous years. One of the main drivers? Crude oil exports.
But compared to the AI-related imports, crude oil exports are less impressive in the sense that they accounted for a smaller share of total exports. The amount, while it stayed elevated from March to June after the start of the Iran war, also peaked in April and May. The picture is not at all similar to that of the AI-buildout imports, which were increasing at an accelerating pace (as shown above).
The conclusion from this little analysis is that both the stated purpose of all the tariff policies—to eliminate the trade deficit—and one of the alleged benefits of the Iran war—”US is exporting more oil than ever!”—were neatly “defeated” by the massive and increasing imports to support the AI boom.
So… Has the Trump administration ever considered tariffing AI-related imports? 😏
- Note that the total imports figure is seasonally adjusted but the amount for computers, peripherals and semiconductors is not. The percentage should be treated as an illustrative rather than a precise indicator
- Nonmonetary gold trade is excluded from GDP calculations, so it’s best to take it out to get a clear picture of how international trade impacts domestic expenditures
