Scott Lincicome and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon
Buried in yesterday’s Census Bureau release of the latest US international trade data for full-year 2024 was a nice reminder that, for all the talk of tariffs and “de-globalization,” American consumers and companies aren’t having any of it—at least not yet. In fact, inflation-adjusted US goods imports hit an all-time high last year (Figure 1).
As shown in Figure 2, moreover, this surge was fueled by large increases in imports of consumer goods and capital equipment, the latter of which are used by American manufacturers to make other stuff:
Of course, these data come before the 10 percent tariffs that President Trump just imposed on all Chinese imports, as well as the tariffs he’s threatened on imports from Canada, Mexico, Europe, and elsewhere—taxes that could forcibly reverse the above trends. In the meantime, however, the data are a nice reminder of Americans’ revealed preferences for imports and that while American politicians might be souring on trade, American companies and consumers most definitely aren’t.