on rising imports<\/a>, driven by goods that include pharmaceuticals, mobile phones and semiconductors.<\/p>\nImports ticked up 3.3 percent from April to $395.3bn while exports fell 3.2 percent to $317.7bn, according to a report released on Tuesday by the US Department of Commerce\u2019s Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
Overall, the trade gap grew by 42.2 percent from the previous month to $77.6bn, marking the biggest jump in a year.<\/p>\n
The surge came amid a boom in artificial intelligence spending across the economy. Notably, semiconductor imports jumped by $1.2bn.<\/p>\n
In the oil and gas sector, petroleum imports jumped to their highest level on record despite the US-Israel war on Iran. Imports of crude oil increased by $1.5bn.<\/p>\n
Imports of automotive parts and engines jumped by $2.2bn. Passenger car imports specifically increased by $1bn. The increases came as carmakers look to move stateside amid heightened pressure from tariffs.<\/p>\n
Toyota announced it would invest $3.6bn in expanding its US auto production. The Japanese automaker said it will move production of its Tacoma pick-up truck to a plant in San Antonio, Texas, by 2030.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump touted the move, calling it \u201ca really big deal\u201d, and said \u201ctariffs at work\u201d in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.<\/p>\n
The US posted its largest trade deficits in May with Vietnam ($20.6bn), Mexico ($20.1bn), Taiwan ($19.4bn), China ($14.5bn) and the European Union ($9.3bn) while its biggest trade surpluses were with the Netherlands ($9.1bn), Hong Kong ($5.6bn), South and Central America ($4.8bn), Australia ($1.9bn) and the United Kingdom ($1.4bn), according to the data.<\/p>\n
Neighbouring Canada\u2019s trade surplus widened for the fourth straight month, hitting a four-year high as goods shipped to the US reached their highest level since February 2025, according to Statistics Canada, which also released trade data on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Canada had a trade surplus of 4.24 billion Canadian dollars (US$2.98bn), marking a 0.9 percent increase from the month before.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imbalance soars to $77.6bn in May as imports outpaced exports, driven by pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Published On 7…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,1954,969,113,61,1955,60,43,1650,2737,115,2739],"class_list":["post-537926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-business-and-economy","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-international-trade","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-trade-war","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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