Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. trade deficit widened in December to $65.7 billion, ending a year of record energy prices and surging Chinese imports that made for the biggest annual shortfall ever. The bigger gap in December followed a $64.7 billion deficit in November, the Commerce Department reported in Washington. American companies imported $726 billion more goods and services than they exported in 2005, the fourth straight year of record deficits. Improvement in the trade deficit this year may prove difficult because the U.S. economy is stronger than most of its trading partners, economists said. China accounted for 26 percent of the total U.S. deficit last year, the most for any country, eliciting a chorus of criticism from lawmakers about the Asian nation's trade and currency policies. By region, the Commerce Department reported that the trade deficit with Japan narrowed to $6.8 billion from $7.3 billion. The deficit with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries narrowed to $7.6 billion from $7.8 billion. For all of last year, the U.S. shortfalls with Japan and OPEC were the highest on record.
Elsewhere, the deficit with Canada, the largest U.S. trading partner, widened to $8 billion from $7.7 billion. The gap with Mexico narrowed to $4.3 billion from $4.6 billion. The deficit with the European Union narrowed to $10.1 billion from $11.2 billion. ``The way out of these deficits is that the U.S. currency will start to come down over the next two to three years,'' said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts.
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