Since President Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the U.S. administration has taken up steps to counter the United States’ huge trade deficit with China, especially in goods. Overall the administration has initiated around 85 separate countervailing and anti-dumping investigations since the inauguration, which is almost 60 percent increase from the past year, with many of them directed at China. President Trump has also ordered the Commerce Department to review whether imports of Steel and Aluminum from countries like China hurts national security, reports of which were submitted recently for Presidential review.
While the actions taken with regard to international trade takes time to reflect on the hard data, the latest trade numbers released earlier in the week suggests that there has been not much impact so far. As a matter of fact, the United States’ goods trade deficit with China has hit a record high in 2017 of $375.2 billion. (refer to the chart)
Over the coming years, we at FxWirePro would be closely monitoring these numbers as it would define Trump’s administration’s success in trade.
