The US trade gap increased by more than $3 billion in August to $53.2 billion, the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis said in a press release on Friday. The deficit with China set an all-time record of $36.8 billion.
"The growing US trade deficit points to two critical things," CPA CEO Michael Stumo said in the release on Friday. "We must continue to limit and reduce Chinese imports until Beijing shows signs of changing their illegal and unethical trading practices. Second, we need to take action to reduce the value of the US dollar."
Many Chinese companies, according to the release, are speeding up imports to beat implementation of US tariffs which now apply to some $250 billion dollars’ worth of products.
Since March, the Trump administration has introduced several waves of tariffs worth tens of billions of dollars against Chinese goods in an effort to rebuild the US industrial base. China has retaliated with its own tariffs against US goods, while continuing to maintain, however, that there can be no winners in a trade war. In 2017, the US recorded a $375.2 billion trade deficit with China, with total trade estimated to be worth some $710.4 billion at the time.