A US State On The East Coast Imported $6.3 Billion In Computers And Electronics Last Year

According to a joint February 2025 release by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the United States Census Bureau, the U.S. imported a total of $4.11 trillion worth of goods in 2024, with computer accessories and computers increasing $33.5 billion and $28.3 billion respectively that year. As per the Observatory of Economic Complexity, as of March 2025, Massachusetts' biggest import partners were Canada and Switzerland, followed by Mexico, China, and Ireland. This is significant since, per Office of the United States Trade Representative data from February 2024, China, Mexico and Canada were included as top 10 importers of electronics to the U.S. — with Massachusetts counting computers and electronics as its largest import in 2024, at a total of $6.2 billion. 

To understand how the global supply chain works, you should first look at trade as an indicator of the strength of a country's currency, and by default, it's GDP. Although the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows a pattern of U.S. trade deficits from 2020 to 2025 — $98.4 billion as of February 2025 — it also reveals a growing market for imports – around 3.5% — and a 2.6% decrease in exports. This scenario may indicate that the economies of U.S. trading partners are doing better than the U.S. Between March 2024 and March 2025, Massachusetts exports decreased by $39.6 million while imports increased by $227 million. This could get even worse considering all of the goods the U.S. purchases from Canada that are being affected by Trump's tariffs.

According to a September 2024 review by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the GDP of computer manufacturing in Massachusetts fell after a sharp dive in 2009 — and, per a January 2010 WBUR report, the state's GDP contracted 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2009 — before peaking in 2011 and sporadically rising and falling through 2023. There are reasons Massachusetts has invested so much in importing computers and electronics even at a time when Trump's tariffs have created uncertainty. Massachusetts is leaning into the new world of technology, specifically AI, which, as the home of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), makes sense for the state and the country itself, considering rising competition from China's groundbreaking AI company DeepSeek.

In a 2024 report to the governor of Massachusetts, an AI strategic taskforce submitted plans for a Massachusetts AI hub, in order to "serve as a nexus of AI innovation and facilitate cutting-edge collaboration between government, industry, academia, nonprofits, and startups." In the document's summary of recommendations, the need for high-performance computing infrastructure ranked high on the state's needs. In March 2025, NVIDIA announced its planned to build a Boston-based Accelerated Quantum Research Center with the aim of making AI supercomputers with quantum hardware through partnerships with local computing companies Quantinuum, Quantum Machines, and QuEra Computing. This is in tandem with the state's goal of building an AI hub in Massachusetts, which may have a positive effect on analysts' latest price targets for NVIDIA.

While new Trump tariffs will make American cars more expensive, they will apparently have no effect on computers, thanks to President Trump initiating a pause on electronics tariffs in April 2025. While Apple had a unique way of avoiding Trump's tariffs, ultimately the tech sector would face billions of dollars in costs in order to bring manufacturing plants to the U.S. While China was the main target of these tariffs to begin with, other nations can also claim this reprieve. In guidance provided by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection in April 2025, 20 products were omitted from reciprocal tariffs, including smartphones, laptops, routers, and semiconductor chips.

All of this means that, for Massachusetts, spending on these items in order to help grow the state's GDP could be a smart move. While products related to automobile manufacturing, oil and gas, and dairy are among the list of tariffed products, computers and electronics don't make the list. So while you may be wondering how much the U.S. taxpayer will have to pay for Trump's 'free' $400 million plane, neither the state of Massachusetts nor you have to worry about having to pay more for a new laptop or electronics, at least not yet anyways. This could also be a great benefit to NVIDIA, one of several popular companies worried about Trump's tariffs in 2025.