America's appetite for artificial intelligence hardware has turned into a full-blown import habit. US imports of computers, accessories and semiconductors reached a record $86.9 billion in September 2026, up 151% from a year earlier.

The figure, measured on a Census basis — the tally of physical goods crossing US borders — comes from trade data released on November 4, 2026 by the US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). It shows that the data center boom is no longer just a technology story. It is now a trade story, a deficit story and a supply chain story.

The numbers behind the surge

Tech imports climbed by approximately $12.1 billion in a single month, with most of the increase concentrated in two categories. Computer imports rose by $7.6 billion in September, while accessories added another $5.7 billion.

Semiconductors moved in the opposite direction, with imports falling by $1.2 billion — a rare cooldown, though hardly enough to dent the overall total.

The run rate is the eye-catching part. Annualized, tech imports now exceed $1 trillion, and tech-product imports have doubled in just two years.

The 151% annual jump also clears historical peaks. During the dot-com boom, the comparable rise topped out at 34%.

Capital goods and the trade deficit

The tech surge spilled into the broader import data. Total capital goods imports — the equipment companies buy to produce goods and services — rose by $11.6 billion to a record $158 billion in September.

Oddly enough, the overall goods-and-services trade deficit narrowed slightly to $105.0 billion, meaning the gap shrank even as tech imports exploded.

Technology still dominated that picture. Tech products accounted for approximately 61% of the US trade deficit in September, driven by a $64 billion deficit in computers and semiconductors alone.

From net exporter to heavy importer

The reversal happened quickly. Three years ago, the United States was a net exporter of technology products. Today, it runs large monthly deficits in the category.

The driver is demand for AI-enabling hardware, with US consumption of that equipment more than quadrupling since early 2024. Hyperscale data center construction adds fuel to the trend. These are the massive facilities built by the largest cloud and AI operators, and each one requires enormous quantities of servers, networking gear and chips.

Many of those components are manufactured overseas. As a result, every new data center groundbreaking in the US tends to show up, a few months later, as a line item in the import statistics.

What to watch

The imports themselves are also doing real economic work. They support US growth and help boost corporate earnings in the tech sector, since companies need this hardware to sell AI services.

There is a catch, and it sits on the map. A substantial portion of the economic value tied to these imports flows to suppliers overseas, particularly in Taiwan and South Korea — the economies that anchor global semiconductor manufacturing.

Several things are worth monitoring from here. The first is whether the monthly pace holds above the $86.9 billion mark or settles back as data center projects shift from equipment purchases to operation.

The second is the semiconductor line. September's $1.2 billion decline stood out against gains in computers and accessories, and a sustained pullback would be a different signal than a one-month dip.

The third is the capital goods total. The record $158 billion shows how much of the business investment story now runs through imported equipment, and future reports will reveal whether that concentration deepens.

The report was published by CryptoBriefing on November 6, 2026, and edited by Diego Almada Lopez.