AI Buildout Drives U.S. Goods Deficit to $134.9B

The U.S. merchandise-trade deficit widened to $134.9 billion in September as companies bought record amounts of overseas equipment for the artificial intelligence buildout. The Commerce Department’s figures, released Wednesday, put the deficit at its largest level since March 2025. The numbers weren’t adjusted for inflation.

Imports of capital goods, including computers and accessories, semiconductors and telecommunications equipment, climbed 7.5% to a record. Companies outfitting data centers with components produced abroad drove that surge. The hardware is crossing borders; the spending decisions are being made by companies building data centers.

The corporate buildout behind the gap

“The hardware that the tech companies need is coming from overseas, driving a massive widening in the trade gap,” Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander Capital Markets, said in a note. Capital goods were the primary driver of the deficit’s deterioration over the previous year. Their deficit was $54.3 billion larger than a year earlier, accounting for more than the increase in the overall deficit over that period.

The total deficit grew 2.1% from the prior month. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected it to narrow to $130.2 billion. Instead, the figures show a wider gap, with imported equipment for the AI buildout at its center.

The value of merchandise imports rose 2.4% from August, while exports increased 2.6%. Those figures describe the movement of goods, not an inflation-adjusted comparison: the Commerce Department data weren’t adjusted for inflation.

Who gets counted in the numbers

Consumer-goods imports rose 3.1% in September, the largest monthly increase in four months, but remained 12% below their level a year earlier. The figures do not identify who buys those goods or who benefits from the data-center investment; they show the import and export totals recorded by the government.

Exports of consumer goods rose 6.5%. Shipments of food, feeds and beverages increased 12.8%, while industrial-supplies exports fell 1.6%. That category includes petroleum products and volatile nonmonetary gold trade. The separate movements help explain why a broad trade balance can shift even as some exports rise.

Retail inventories increased 0.3%, and wholesale inventories rose 0.6%, according to figures released alongside the trade data. The figures will help inform the government’s estimate of third-quarter gross domestic product. The accounting reaches beyond the companies importing the equipment: net exports also affect the reported measure of economic growth.

Growth measured against trade

Before the latest data, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model estimated net exports would reduce third-quarter growth by 2.86 percentage points. Net exports subtracted 1.10 percentage points from GDP in the second quarter.

“The massive drag on GDP growth from net trade in Q3 likely will be partly offset by a very big jump in equipment investment, and particularly computer equipment investment,” Oliver Allen, senior U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a note. “At least some of the import surge also likely will show up in inventories. That latest data, however, suggests that this offset will be modest.”

More complete monthly trade figures, including the services balance and inflation-adjusted merchandise-trade data, were due Nov. 4. Separate figures published earlier in October showed September import prices rose 1.1% and export prices rose 2.2%. For now, the headline result is plain: record imports of equipment for corporate data centers accompanied a wider goods-trade deficit.