According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the deficit with China decreased more than 25 percent to $279 billion in 2023, as tensions – both economic and political – between the two superpowers have remained high.
Amid those tensions, many companies have tried to reduce their dependency on China by diversifying their supply chain or moving final assembly to other Asian countries.
Moreover, Chinese platforms like Temu, which are shipping increasingly large quantities of packages directly to U.S. consumers, take advantage of the so-called de minimis exception, which allows packages worth less than $800 to enter the U.S. tariff free.
These shipments aren’t counted in U.S. trade data, meaning that actual imports from China are higher than official data suggests.
