President Trump has long viewed the U.S. trade deficit, the gap between what the country exports and imports, as a negative barometer of the economy.
But these days, the trade deficit is being driven in part by something essential to the success of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
The rise of artificial intelligence has become a force propelling the economy and the stock market. But it is also fueling the U.S. trade deficit, as tech companies import expensive foreign computers and chips to fill their new data centers.
U.S. imports of computers, computer accessories and semiconductors topped more than $450 billion over the past year, shooting up more than 60 percent from when Mr. Trump was inaugurated through this January, according to U.S. trade data.
Computers and electronics have become a sizable chunk of overall U.S. goods imports, which reached $3.4 trillion last year.
The 2025 trade deficit in goods grew to a record $1.2 trillion. In particular, the U.S. trade deficit with Taiwan, the source of the most advanced A.I. semiconductors, roughly doubled last year, to $146 billion.
Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who has analyzed the trade data, said the construction of A.I. data centers across the country was “very import intensive,” with South Korea, Taiwan and China all reporting strong export growth in A.I.-related products.
“Unless there is a shock that reduces planned investment, it is hard to see how this doesn’t result in a larger U.S. trade deficit in 2026,” he said.
Mr. Trump sees the trade deficit as sign of economic weakness, and he is trying to bring it down by imposing tariffs on foreign goods. It’s a strategy many economists have questioned.
Some economists say the trade deficit is driven largely by other economic forces, like government spending or the value of the dollar. Others say that tariffs may reduce demand for foreign goods, but that Mr. Trump has carved out significant swaths of imports that avoid high tariffs, like pharmaceuticals and electronics.
Unlike cars, steel and other goods, electronics were intentionally spared by Mr. Trump. Last April, the administration issued an exemption from tariffs for smartphones, computers, semiconductors and other electronics. It was a significant break for tech companies, like Apple, Nvidia and Dell, that have lobbied the president against broad tariffs.
The administration argued that other tariffs would soon hit the sector, under a national security-related trade investigation. But those tariffs never arrived.
The tariff exemption has increased demand for imports of computers, semiconductors and other equipment. So has rapid data center construction around the United States. According to the property firm JLL, more than 35 gigawatts of data center capacity is under construction in North America, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of Britain or Italy.
The A.I. boom has helped to prop up an otherwise lackluster U.S. economy. It is also powering growth in the stock market, which Mr. Trump has long seen as a metric of his administration’s success. Over the past three years, America’s largest tech stocks — a group known as the Magnificent Seven — have been responsible for more than half of the 88 percent gain in the S&P 500.
Like the Biden administration before it, the Trump administration has tried to encourage the construction of more U.S. factories to make A.I. chips and computers. The goal is seen as particularly crucial given the industry’s dependence on Taiwan, which could someday be under threat from a Chinese blockade or invasion.
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the island’s premier chip maker, has promised to expand its operations in the United States as part of a U.S.-Taiwan trade deal.
But construction of these plants is expected to take years, and will still leave the United States dependent on foreign technology suppliers.
Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, has called for moving 40 percent of Taiwan’s capacity for advanced chip production to the United States within the next three years.
Taiwanese officials have called the goal “impossible.” At a news conference on Tuesday, Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, the world’s biggest manufacturer of A.I. chips, said that bringing 40 percent of Taiwanese chip production to the United States would be “very challenging in the near term,” in part because demand for A.I. chips continues to grow so rapidly.
Kalley Huang contributed reporting from San Jose, Calif.
Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade.
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