The ongoing trade spat with China – and the subsequent U.S. tariffs on over $500 billion of Chinese goods has had another effect on the relationship between the two countries.
For the first six months of 2019, Mexico supplanted China as the top trading partner of the United States.
For the first half of the year, imports from China decreased 12 percent. In the same period, U.S. exports to China decreased 19 percent. The U.S. Department of Commerce reported that for the six months of the year, the total value of the bilateral trade of goods between the U.S. and China was $271.04 billion.
This amount was less than the U.S. bilateral trade amounts with both Canada and Mexico – the first time this has occurred since 2005.
The net result of the downturn in U.S.-China trade means that Mexico was the largest trading partner of the U.S. for the first half of 2019.Look for further coverage of the trade issues between the U.S. and China – as well as their impact on the freight economy – from FreightWaves.