Summary: American trade deficit in auto parts with China and other countries

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai) - Recently, there have been warnings coming from several in the United States Congress regarding the danger of the ever-growing trade deficit the country has in the global auto part industry. According to them, this deficit has the potential to harm the American automotive industry as a whole. To this end, there have been calls to the White House to limit the number of auto parts imported from China. Non-profit group Alliance for American Manufacturing has also remarked on the pace with which Chinese auto part imports have grown over the last decade. According to the group's statistics, $62 billion worth of auto parts have been imported since 2001, with the U.S.'s trade deficit towards China having grown 850 percent. In 2011 alone, China exported nearly $10 billion worth of auto parts to the U.S., while total U.S. exports to China were only around $7.6 billion.

In reality, China is actually not the largest source of American deficit in the auto part industry. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics collected by Gasgoo.com (Chinese), most of the country's deficit in the industry over the last decade came from Japan. In 2005 alone trade with Japan left the U.S. with a deficit of just under $15 billion. Mexico has also been a large source of American trade deficit, with the deficit totaling $14.52 billion in 2007 (by comparison, deficits from Japanese and Chinese auto part trade that year totaled $13.02b and $7.49b, respectively). From 2000 to 2006, and in 2010, Japan and Mexico have constantly topped the charts as the two largest sources of American trade deficit in the auto part industry. The country with the third largest surplus from 2000 to 2005 was Germany. Trade deficits with Germany and South Korea still continue to be notably large.

From 2006 onwards, the trade deficit with China has been constantly growing, while the deficit with Japan continues to shrink. By 2008, the deficit with the former had already reached $8.15 billion, while it had decreased to $11.94 billion with the latter. The trade deficit with Mexico that year was valued at $11.39 billion.

2009 saw American auto parts trade decrease as a whole, with individual trade deficits decreasing all across the board. 2009 trade deficits with Japan, China and Mexico were valued at $7.94 billion, $6.49 billion and $6.22 billion, respectively. The following year trade deficits with Japan and Mexico once again exceeded $10 billion, while the deficit