U.S. trade deficit surges to 12-year high in 2020 amid COVID-19 fallout
WASHINGTON, Feb 8 (XINHUA/APP): The overall U.S. trade deficit surged to a 12-year high in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic weighed on both exports and imports, the U.S. Commerce Department said Monday.
The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services widened by 17.7 percent to 678.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis, according to the department. As a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), the trade deficit was 3.2 percent in 2020, up from 2.7 percent in 2019. The data also showed that U.S. exports dropped by 15.7 percent to 2,131.9 billion dollars in 2020 while imports declined by 9.5 percent to 2,810.6 billion dollars amid the COVID-19 fallout.
The widening trade deficit came after the Commerce Department reported last month that the U.S. economy contracted 3.5 percent in 2020, the largest annual decline of U.S. GDP since 1946. While former U.S. President Donald Trump had tried to shrink the U.S. trade deficit by imposing additional tariffs on various imports, economists have argued that U.S. persistent deficit with trading partners resulted from its macroeconomic policy rather than trade flows.
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