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…A paper by Higgins and Klitgaard at the New York Fed - "How Much Have Consumers Spent on Imports during the Pandemic?"- looked at this in detail.³ They found that some of the hottest sectors such as furniture, electrical equipment and appliances experienced big demand increases and brought in significant imports.

This has been reversing for the last two years. When spending initially started to die down, imports remained strong as retailers attempted to rebuild inventory, but once they figured out how weak demand was, imports started to contract, supply chains unclogged, and goods prices cooled off. Meanwhile, the surge in service demand boosted spending and prices, with only a small boost to imports... READ FULL ARTICLE HERE