Market Data

What Counts in the $51.49B U.S. Electrical Machinery Import Number, and What Moves It

A plain-English guide to the Census trade line now printing $51.49B a month: what HS Chapter 85 actually covers, how it is measured, and the three forces that push it up or down.

U.S. electrical machinery and equipment imports, Harmonized System Chapter 85: motors, transformers, semiconductors, switchgear, wiring, and batteries, reached $51.49B per month at their latest reading, May 2026, and the figure is rising, per Census International Trade data, up about 29.9% from a year ago. It is the electrical half of America's imported capital-equipment bill, and the line every grid, data-center, and factory buildout runs through.

What Chapter 85 actually covers

Chapter 85 is broader than the name suggests. Alongside the industrial hardware, electric motors and generators, transformers, switchgear and panelboards, insulated wire and cable, industrial batteries, it also sweeps in semiconductors and integrated circuits, printed circuit assemblies, telephones and networking gear, and consumer electronics. That breadth matters when reading the headline: a swing in the monthly number can come from phone and chip shipments as easily as from motors and switchgear. What it excludes is equally specific, mechanical machinery and computers sit in Chapter 84, and instruments in Chapter 90. A procurement lead buying drives, controls, and panels is buying from the industrial core of this $51.49B-a-month flow.

How the number is measured

The series is a monthly customs value: what the goods themselves were worth at the border, exclusive of international freight, insurance, and duty. It is compiled from actual customs entries rather than a survey, so it is comprehensive but arrives on a lag of roughly five weeks. Because it is denominated in dollars, the line moves with prices and exchange rates as well as physical volume, a weaker yuan or yen lowers the dollar value of the same container of components, while component inflation raises it.

U.S. electrical machinery imports per month, May 2026: $51.49B. The archived history spans $39.38B in Feb 2026 to $281.59B in Apr 2026.

The three forces that move it

First, electrification demand: grid upgrades, data-center construction, and factory automation all pull motors, transformers, and switchgear through this line, and those buildouts run on multi-year schedules that keep demand sticky. Second, currency: most of the flow originates in Asia, so yuan and yen moves show up directly in the dollar value. Third, trade policy: Chapter 85 sits squarely in tariff crosshairs, and announced duties reliably trigger front-running surges followed by air pockets. The month-to-month print mixes all three; the multi-month direction, currently rising, is the readable signal.

Every grid upgrade, data-center build, and factory automation project in America runs through this one trade line.

The scale, annualized

The current pace annualizes to $617.82B of electrical machinery and equipment a year, roughly $2,452 million every business day. A one-percent move in the monthly figure represents about $515 million of trade flow, which is why the series is watched by everyone from copper traders to utilities planning transformer procurement.

The trade line stops at the border; your cost does not. Use the landed cost calculator to price freight, duty, and handling into your imported electrical components. Get from customs value to real cost

Published 2026-07-13.