The deficit with China – the gap between the amount the US buys from China and what it sells – was US$31.62 billion in July, just 3.46 per cent lower than US$32.8 billion in July 2019, data released by the US Census Bureau on Thursday showed.
In quarterly terms, the deficit climbed 36.8 per cent from the first three months of the year to the second, even if it is markedly lower in year-to-date terms than it was last year, due to a shutdown of China’s export engine in the early months of the year, when it was the first to be hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
That rhetoric has not entirely subsided in the intervening four years, with tensions between the US and China now at their highest level for 40 years. Trade is seen as the one sticking plaster holding the relationship together, but even that is stuttering along, rather than powering home. The overall US trade deficit jumped to its highest level in 12 years in July, as imports soared and exports grew by a smaller margin.