AI imports surge

Artificial intelligence is now driving nearly a quarter of U.S. imports, a shift that a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis study says widened the 2025 goods trade deficit by almost $200 billion. (minneapolisfed.org) The study, published April 8, found AI-related imports rose 73% from 2023 to 2025, while non-AI imports increased just 3%. It defines those goods as the servers, graphics processing units, storage gear, and related parts used to build and run AI systems. (minneapolisfed.org) (federalreserve.gov) By 2025, those products made up 23% of all U.S. imports. The divergence began in early 2024, when companies started ordering more hardware for data centers and other AI infrastructure. (minneapolisfed.org) (federalreserve.gov) A data center is a warehouse full of computers, power equipment, and cooling systems, and AI models need far more of that hardware than a standard business application. Federal Reserve researchers wrote in February that U.S. data-center spending alone was expected to top $500 billion in 2025. (federalreserve.gov) That import surge cuts against the stated goal of tariff policy to narrow the trade gap by pushing production back to the United States. The Minneapolis Fed study said many AI-related imports were shielded by product-level tariff exemptions. (minneapolisfed.org) The trade map has shifted with the AI buildout. Mexico and Taiwan together accounted for about half of all U.S. trade in AI-related products in 2025, making them central suppliers and customers in the sector. (minneapolisfed.org) Tariffs still brought in money for Washington even as AI hardware kept flowing in. The Budget Lab at Yale estimated on April 1 that 2025 tariffs had raised $214.7 billion in inflation-adjusted customs revenue above the 2022-2024 average as of February 2026. (budgetlab.yale.edu) But the same Yale update said imported core goods and durable-goods prices both rose 1.5% during 2025 through January 2026, and it warned that about $165 billion in duties could be refunded after the Supreme Court vacated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs on February 20, 2026. (budgetlab.yale.edu) For now, the Fed’s finding is straightforward: demand for AI hardware is large enough to reshape the import data, even while tariff policy is trying to pull trade in the other direction. (minneapolisfed.org)