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    U.S. Trade Deficit Hit Record in 2024 as Imports Surged

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    A strong dollar helped drive an uptick in U.S. imports last year, while export growth remained modest.The U.S. trade deficit in goods hit a record $1.2 trillion last year, as American consumers snapped up imported products and a strong U.S. dollar weighed on export growth.Data released Wednesday morning by the Commerce Department showed that U.S. imports of goods and services grew 6.6 percent to a record $4.1 trillion, as Americans bought large amounts of auto parts, weight-loss drugs, computers and food from other countries.U.S. exports of goods and services to the world also hit a record, reaching $3.2 trillion in 2024.That was driven by record sales of U.S. services, like business and financial advising, as well as foreign spending on travel in the United States. But exports of goods taken on their own grew more sluggishly, as a strong U.S. dollar made it more expensive for other countries to buy American products, and the United States sold fewer cars, car parts and industrial supplies, like raw materials and machinery, to the world.Competition from automakers in China and strikes in the U.S. auto industry weighed on exports of vehicles, parts and engines, which fell $10.8 billion compared with the year before.Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said Chinese electric vehicle sales had taken off in 2024, in China and elsewhere, and were siphoning market share from other producers. Companies like General Motors have been under pressure in China, where more than four-fifths of the electric and plug-in hybrid cars sold are now Chinese brands.“The Chinese auto industry has really come on and is very competitive in the E.V. space,” Mr. Zandi said. “And that’s a real problem for U.S. manufacturers that are producing and exporting to the rest of the world.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Wall Street quizzes US companies over tariff risks

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    Private payrolls expanded by 183,000 in January, topping expectations, ADP says

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    ADP said companies created a net 183,000 jobs on the month, slightly more than the 176,000 in December.
    Pay for workers who stayed in their jobs grew at a 4.7% annual rate, or 0.1 percentage point more than in December.
    All of the job creation came from service providers, who added 190,000 positions while goods producers lost 6,000.

    Maplewood, Minnesota. Metro Transit hiring drivers with the possibility to make $30.00 an hour. (Photo by: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
    Ucg | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

    Private sector companies added more jobs than expected in January, furthering the case for a stable labor market that allows the Federal Reserve time as it contemplates its next policy move, ADP reported Wednesday.
    The payrolls processing firm said companies created a net 183,000 jobs on the month, slightly more than the 176,000 in December, a number that was revised sharply upward from the initial figure of 122,000. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a gain of 150,000.

    Pay for workers who stayed in their jobs grew at a 4.7% annual rate, or 0.1 percentage point more than in December.
    Though the headline ADP number topped expectations, the internals showed an unbalanced picture.
    All of the job creation came from service providers, who added 190,000 positions while goods producers lost 6,000. (The numbers don’t add up to the 183,000 due to rounding.)
    “We had a strong start to 2025 but it masked a dichotomy in the labor market,” APD chief economist Nela Richardson said. “Consumer-facing industries drove hiring, while job growth was weaker in business services and production.”
    Trade, transportation and utilities topped sectors with 56,000 new jobs, with leisure and hospitality close behind at 54,000 and education and health services adding 20,000. However, manufacturing lost 13,000 positions.

    Job creation was spread fairly evenly across business size, with companies that employ workers leading with 92,000.
    Fed officials are watching the jobs picture closely as they consider whether to continue lowering interest rates. The Fed last year cut 1 percentage point off its key borrowing rate in an effort to support a labor market that had showed signs of slowing. Recently, policymakers have stressed the importance of staying patient as they watch the tariff battle in Washington as well as the impact from the rate reductions.
    The ADP report serves as a run-up to the more closely watched nonfarm payrolls report, due Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which unlike ADP includes government workers. The consensus view for the BLS report is a gain of 169,000 in payrolls in January, with the unemployment rate holding at 4.1%.
    The two reports sometimes differ significantly. However, ADP said it continues to expand its sample size for the pay measure portion, which is now at 14.8 million compared to nearly 10 million when it launched. More

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    The deceptively negotiable Donald Trump

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