The US trade deficit with China narrowed significantly in October at 4.2 per cent. The US overall trade gap for the month grew 17.8 per cent, the biggest increase since March 2015. China's measures to promote steady economic growth have contributed to growing consumer appetite for US goods. China’s trade surplus with the US has been growing since 2000, reaching 42.1 billion dollars in 2002 and surpassing 200 billion dollars in the January-November period of this year.

Growth has slowed in recent years, with just a 0.9 per cent year-on-year increase in the first eleven months of this year, largely due to improvement of the trade balance between the two countries. With transfer of processing trade, the main source of trade surplus between China and the United States, to other regions such as Southeast Asia, the trade gap between the two countries has narrowed.

The United States has become China’s second largest trade partner while China is the US' largest trade partner. China-US trade rose at an average annual growth rate of over seven per cent in recent years. US goods and services, including 22 per cent of its cotton, 26 per cent of Boeing airplanes and 56 per cent of its soybean, were sold to China, creating nearly a million jobs for the exporter.