Chart of the day: Largest US trade partners
Below is the list of the largest trade partners of the United States as compiled by the US Census Bureau. The United States has a bilateral trade deficit with 12 of the 15. So I have ranked them according to trade deficit, with China in first place by a country mile. Mexico is second, while Japan and Germany are third and fourth respectively. (With the EU as a whole, the US had a trade deficit of $80 billion). The list also includes oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, but the lion’s share of the US trade deficit is in goods and services.
UPDATE: To give a fuller picture, I sorted the 2010 data for all countries and areas by trade deficit. Below are the resulting charts. Note that the US has large deficits with the Pacific Rim, NAFTA, OPEC and the European Union. The US had a trade deficit with 86 countries and a trade surplus with 147 countries. The largest surpluses were with Hong Kong at $22.2 billion and the Netherlands at $15.9 billion.
Sources: Wikipedia, US Census Bureau
Your top table looks wrong. For example, where are Nigeria and Russia (deficits of 26.5 and 19.7 in the bottom table)?
Note: these deficits are almost exclusively oil.
The top table is a compilation of the largest trading partners, not the countries with which the US has the largest deficits.
Okay my mistake, I thought you were trying to show where we had the largest deficits.
In that regard, I’m skeptical about your claim that:
“The list also includes oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, but the lion’s share of the US trade deficit is in goods and services.”
By implication, you’re not counting oil as a good, and I think, underplaying the role that oil plays in the deficit. The trade deficit can be seen this way:
Oil $230 billion
China $270 billion
Other $130 billion
Total $630 billion
China and oil dwarf everything else.