Study finds surge in US trade of AI-related products

Michael E. Waugh (NBER) publishes Working Paper 35053 documenting U.S. trade in AI-related products.

• Main announcement:AI-related products account for 23 percent of U.S. imports in 2025; imports of these products have grown 73 percent since 2023 while imports of non-AI-related products grew only 3 percent over the same period, with the divergence beginning in early 2024. Mexico and Taiwan together account for about half of all U.S. trade in AI-related products.
• Background and details: The paper notes that product-level exemptions in trade policy have largely shielded AI-related imports from tariffs; the author provides code and supplementary materials at https://github.com/tradewartracker/ai-trade-index. The Working Paper is NBER Working Paper 35053 (Issue Date April 2026, DOI 10.3386/w35053) and estimates that absent the AI boom the U.S. goods trade deficit would have been nearly $200 billion smaller in 2025.