The United States trade deficit in goods unexpectedly widened in September to $134.9 billion, the largest since March 2025, as imports surged to a record high on the back of the artificial-intelligence infrastructure buildout, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau reported on Wednesday, October 28. The figures suggest trade was a significant drag on U.S. economic growth in the third quarter — even as the spending behind those imports points to strong business investment and consumer demand.

Source: Reuters

The goods shortfall increased 2.1 percent, or $2.8 billion, from the month before. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a deficit of $130.2 billion, so the gap came in wider than expected. The goods trade gap also widened across the third quarter as a whole, the Commerce Department data showed.

AI hardware is driving the import surge

Goods imports rose 2.4 percent, or $8.1 billion, to $344.1 billion in September. The engine was capital goods — the machinery and equipment businesses buy to expand capacity. Capital-goods imports jumped 7.5 percent in the month and soared 77.2 percent compared with a year earlier, a rise Reuters linked to the AI infrastructure buildout: the servers, chips and electrical equipment going into the data centres that technology companies are building across the United States, much of that hardware manufactured overseas. "So much of the hardware that the tech companies need is coming from overseas, driving a massive widening in the trade gap," said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander US Capital Markets.

Why a bigger deficit can signal strength, not weakness

A trade deficit mechanically subtracts from gross domestic product, because GDP counts domestic production and imports are produced abroad. Some economists estimate trade subtracted as much as four percentage points from GDP growth last quarter. But economists quoted by Reuters cautioned against reading the wider gap as economic weakness. "Although trade will weigh on quarterly GDP, this is a sign of strength rather than weakness for the US economy as it signifies continued business investment and momentum for consumer spending," said Daniel Vielhaber, an economist at Nationwide. Alongside the AI investment frenzy, Reuters reported, relentless strength in consumer spending — despite the rising cost of living — is also pulling in imports, from electronics to household goods.

The background: what the goods deficit is — and is not

This report covers goods only — physical products crossing borders — not services such as software, finance, education or tourism, where the United States typically runs a surplus that offsets part of the goods gap in the full trade figures. It is also an advance Census Bureau release, published ahead of the complete monthly trade report, and its numbers can be revised. The deficit figure on its own says nothing about whether trade is "fair"; it records that Americans bought more foreign-made goods than the country sold abroad in September, in a month when businesses were importing investment equipment at an extraordinary pace and households kept spending.

What it means for truckers, ports and warehouse corridors

Record goods imports are, in physical terms, record freight. Every container of servers, chips and consumer goods that lands at a U.S. port has to move — by rail, and very often by truck — to data-centre construction sites, distribution centres and stores. For the Punjabi diaspora, which has a large presence in U.S. trucking, port drayage and warehousing from California to New Jersey, sustained import volumes of this size support freight demand even when headline GDP arithmetic makes trade look like a drag. The composition matters too: capital-goods imports tied to multi-year data-centre construction are project freight, driven by building schedules rather than by one season's retail demand.

What happens next

Three follow-ups will complete the picture. First, Thursday's advance GDP estimate will show how much the trade drag actually weighed against investment and consumer spending in the July–September quarter. Second, the Commerce Department's fuller monthly trade report will add services trade and any revisions to these advance goods figures. Third, the capital-goods trend bears watching: a 77.2 percent year-on-year jump is a buildout pace, and whether it holds will say a great deal about how long the AI construction boom — and the import demand that comes with it — continues.