Mexican exports to the U.S. in 2023 topped out at $475.6 billion, beating China, which saw its exports to the U.S. fall by 20% year-over-year to $427.2 billion. New data published February 7 shows that Mexico surpassed China as the U.S.’s top source of imports in 2023 for the first time in 20 years.

According to The New York Times, the data also showed that U.S. quarterly imports from China in 2023 were at about the same level they were in 2013.

“We are decoupling, and that’s weighing heavily on trade flows,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, discussing the trade relationship between the U.S. and China.

Research conducted by Caroline Freund, the dean of the University of California at San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, demonstrated that trade with China fell for products that have high tariffs, while trade continued to increase for products that do not.

Ralph Ossa, chief economist of the World Trade Organization (WTO), said that trade between China and the U.S. was growing at a rate 30% slower than trade between those two countries and the rest of the world.

“There was a period where geopolitics didn’t really matter for trade much, but as uncertainty increases in the world, we do see that trade becomes more sensitive to these positions,” said Stela Rubinova, a research economist for the WTO.