The US imported more from Taiwan than China for the first time in decades as President Donald Trump ’s tariffs reshape trade flows while a global boom in artificial intelligence fuels demand for tech products. US purchases of goods from China plunged almost 44% in December from a year earlier to $21.1 billion, Commerce Department data showed Thursday. By contrast, shipments from Taiwan more than d...
The US imported more from Taiwan than China for the first time in decades as President Donald Trump ’s tariffs reshape trade flows while a global boom in artificial intelligence fuels demand for tech products. US purchases of goods from China plunged almost 44% in December from a year earlier to $21.1 billion, Commerce Department data showed Thursday. By contrast, shipments from Taiwan more than doubled during the same period to $24.7 billion. The soaring Taiwanese shipments to the US reflect the huge expansion in supplies of chips and servers for AI companies, which has completely changed the self-ruled island’s trade profile and propelled its near $1 trillion economy into one of the world’s fastest growing. In 2023, Taiwan exported more to China than to the US or anywhere else. But last year, the surge in goods going from the island across the Pacific Ocean was roughly double that going across the narrow Taiwan Strait. While Chinese exporters have increasingly diversified from the US due to the much higher tariffs imposed on them by Trump, Taiwanese firms have taken the opposite tack, with the US taking almost a third of Taiwan’s total exports last year. Even as China’s exporters have succeeded in escaping Trump’s tariffs by making deeper inroads into markets beyond the US or routing goods via third countries, direct trade between the world’s two largest economies has seen a steep decline. At the same time, the latest data also showed the limits of Trump’s efforts to balance out global trade. The US ran a $12.7 billion trade deficit in December with China, a gap that only trailed the European Union, Taiwan, Vietnam and Mexico. For the full year, the deficit with China fell $93.4 billion to $202.1 billion in 2025, while it more than doubled to almost $147 billion with Taiwan. Taipei’s Ministry of Finance said exports have been buoyed by surging demand for the island’s tech products, with shipments of “information, communications and audiovisual products” to the US ...
Driven by Chinese demand, Zimbabwe produced a record 352.7 million kilograms of tobacco – valued at about US$1.2 billion – in last year’s marketing season. This represents a major turnaround for an industry that, if not for Chinese investment, would have nearly collapsed two decades ago, although it remains a crop of concern for health campaigners. As Zimbabwe’s largest agricultural export and a p...
Driven by Chinese demand, Zimbabwe produced a record 352.7 million kilograms of tobacco – valued at about US$1.2 billion – in last year’s marketing season. This represents a major turnaround for an industry that, if not for Chinese investment, would have nearly collapsed two decades ago, although it remains a crop of concern for health campaigners. As Zimbabwe’s largest agricultural export and a primary foreign currency earner, tobacco dominates its trade with Beijing. Last year, China imported...
Arkadiusz Warguła/iStock via Getty Images US trade deficit continued to widen in December after hitting the smallest monthly amount since the 2009 low in October. The total import was USD 70.3 billion higher than the export in the last month of 2025, according to the US Census Bureau . Period 2025-12-01 2025-11-01 2025-10-01 2025-09-01 2025-08-01 2025-07-01 2025-06-01 Trade Balance -70.3 -53.0 -28...
Arkadiusz Warguła/iStock via Getty Images US trade deficit continued to widen in December after hitting the smallest monthly amount since the 2009 low in October. The total import was USD 70.3 billion higher than the export in the last month of 2025, according to the US Census Bureau . Period 2025-12-01 2025-11-01 2025-10-01 2025-09-01 2025-08-01 2025-07-01 2025-06-01 Trade Balance -70.3 -53.0 -28.7 -47.7 -55.2 -73.9 -57.7 Exports 287.3 292.3 302.6 293.9 283.7 283.6 280.2 Imports 357.6 345.3 331.3 341.6 338.9 357.5 337.9 Click to enlarge Now we have a full picture of the accumulated trade balance in 2025: compared to 2024, the full-year trade deficit for goods and services was merely USD 2.06 billion lower. The shortfall was unusually concentrated in the first half of the year as firms rushed to stock up on foreign products before the tariff policies hit. If we zoom in to just goods trade, the accumulated goods trade gap rose to USD 1,230 billion in 2025, from USD 1,204 billion in the previous year, reaching a new all-time high . What do these trade data mean for Q4 GDP The December figures also give us a complete overview of Q4 net export contribution to economic growth. Now, to translate trade numbers into GDP contributions, one of the most important adjustments these days is to first exclude non-monetary gold. This is because most of the cross-border trade involving non-monetary gold involves no local production in the US; they are merely ownership transfers of investment assets that are not within GDP’s coverage. Removing non-monetary gold from trade data, the trade deficit for goods and services in December would rise to USD 73 billion. Take the average of the month of ex-gold trade deficit in Q4 (shown in the red lines in the graph below), and we can see the number was very close to the level in Q3. This means we should expect a minimal contribution from net exports in the Q4 GDP. This is also the same conclusion the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow draws. The nowcasting ...
IMF Urges Beijing To Curb Industrial Subsidies As Flood Of Chinese Goods Crushes Global Industrial Bases China's factory overcapacity is the result of Beijing's long-running industrial policies. Years of state support have built more factory capacity than domestic demand can absorb in the world's second-largest economy, flooding global markets with low-priced goods, from EVs to TVs. The end result...
IMF Urges Beijing To Curb Industrial Subsidies As Flood Of Chinese Goods Crushes Global Industrial Bases China's factory overcapacity is the result of Beijing's long-running industrial policies. Years of state support have built more factory capacity than domestic demand can absorb in the world's second-largest economy, flooding global markets with low-priced goods, from EVs to TVs. The end result is a growing risk of hollowing out industrial bases worldwide, and our latest example this week has washed up on Europe's shores in the form of EVs. China has absolutely killed the European auto market pic.twitter.com/J2AD2zyRea — zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 19, 2026 January registrations of Chinese EVs across Europe were certainly eye-opening, signaling the decline of Europe's industrial base ( read the note here ). As Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey recently warned, "China would love to wipe out the American automotive industry, partly for economic reasons, because it also means we will never be able to fight a war against them..." It appears the rest of the world is finally getting the memo after more than a decade of Chinese overcapacity flooding global markets and pressuring industrial bases worldwide into collapse. The International Monetary Fund warned this week that Beijing should significantly scale back state support for industry, citing spillover risks that could undermine manufacturing bases abroad. China's industrial policies "are giving rise to international spillovers and pressures" and, compounded with soft domestic demand, are making the world's second-largest economy "more reliant on manufacturing exports as a source of growth," the IMF said. " Industrial policy has enabled tech innovation in some sectors, but overall the impact on the economy has been negative ," said Sonali Jain-Chandra, mission chief at the IMF for China and Asia Pacific, who was quoted by the Financial Times . She pointed to "resource misallocation" and "overspending." IM...
Ivana Bartoletti, Global Chief Privacy and AI Governance Officer at Wipro, says agentic AI has brought new complexities to AI ethics and security. She speaks on "Bloomberg: The China Show" from the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. (Source: Bloomberg)
Ivana Bartoletti, Global Chief Privacy and AI Governance Officer at Wipro, says agentic AI has brought new complexities to AI ethics and security. She speaks on "Bloomberg: The China Show" from the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. (Source: Bloomberg)
Nasa on Thursday blamed what it called engineering vulnerabilities in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft along with internal agency mistakes in a sharply critical report assessing a botched mission that left two astronauts stranded in space. The US space agency labelled the 2024 test flight of the Starliner capsule a “Type A” mishap - the same classification of the deadly Challenger and Columbia shuttl...
Nasa on Thursday blamed what it called engineering vulnerabilities in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft along with internal agency mistakes in a sharply critical report assessing a botched mission that left two astronauts stranded in space. The US space agency labelled the 2024 test flight of the Starliner capsule a “Type A” mishap - the same classification of the deadly Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters - a category that reflects the “potential for a significant mishap,” it said. The...
In today's video, I discuss recent updates affecting Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) and other AI stocks. To learn more, check out the short video, consider subscribing, and click the special offer link below. *Stock prices used were the after-market prices of Feb. 17, 2026. The video was published on Feb. 17, 2026. Continue reading
In today's video, I discuss recent updates affecting Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) and other AI stocks. To learn more, check out the short video, consider subscribing, and click the special offer link below. *Stock prices used were the after-market prices of Feb. 17, 2026. The video was published on Feb. 17, 2026. Continue reading