Trump · Fortune Technology
The AI boom is single-handedly carrying the U.S. import market—and adding $200B to the trade deficit, Fed study shows
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When President Donald Trump returned to office last year, he framed his tariff policy as a bid to bring manufacturing of strategic materials and equipment back to the U.S.
Key facts
- Waugh’s accounting attributes $265 billion in AI imports last year, compared with $71 billion in AI-related exports, underscoring the AI manufacturing supply chain remains a net drag on the trade
- Waugh found effective tariff rates on AI-related products were only 4.5% at the end of 2025, versus 12.1% for non-AI goods, largely because product-level exemptions carved out much of the AI supply
- Taken together, imports of AI-related products have grown 73% since 2023, while imports of non-AI-related products have risen only 3% over the same period, the study found
- AI-related private investment in the U.S. last year hit $286 billion, according to Stanford University’s AI Index report, about the same as the lifetime cost of the entire Apollo program in today’s
Summary
More than a year later, his sweeping trade agenda has indeed forced a crackdown on imports, so much so that a single technological force has grown into the primary engine of the country’s trade economy. The AI boom has been the undisputed hotspot of the U.S. economy during the past year. Infrastructure and research costs accounted for more than $140 billion of that sum, with a large chunk earmarked to build the massive data centers that have been powering the AI boom. AI-related products accounted for 23% of all U.S. imports last year, according to a study published earlier this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.