The March trade gap sharply exceeded analyst forecasts of 60 billion dollars, raising fresh concerns about the gap's drag on the US economy. It was the widest since September 2006 and rose from 57.9 billion in February.

The politically sensitive US trade gap with China narrowed by 6.4 percent to 17.2 billion dollars, compared with 18.4 billion in February.

Exports to China in March hit a new record high of 5.5 billion dollars, while imports from the Asian powerhouse were at their lowest level since May 2006, at 22.7 billion.

China, by far the leader in the US trade deficit, is under fire from US officials, industry and labor unions who accuse Beijing of keeping its currency, the yuan, artificially low to make exports unfairly competitive.

However, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Thursday that long-term structural imbalances were the biggest driver of the large deficit with China.

"Most of their growth is driven by exports and there's not a big enough domestic consumption portion to their growth," Paulson told CBNC television.

Analysts said the March trade figure would lead to a roughly half-point loss in a revision of first-quarter economic growth.

Marie-Pierre Ripert, economist at IXIS Corporate and Investment Bank, said first-quarter gross domestic product growth "is likely to be revised significantly downward" to 0.8 percent from the 1.3 percent officially estimated last month.

Peter Morici, a University of Maryland economist, pointed out that the monthly trade gap has shot up 140 percent since December 2001.

"Each dollar spent on imports, not matched by a dollar of exports, shifts workers into activities where productivity is lower and reduces domestic demand and employment," he said.

The trade shortfall grew 10.4 percent from the previous month, the sharpest monthly change in the trade picture since September 2005.

In March, imports surged 4.5 percent to 190.1 billion dollars, their highest level since August 2006. Exports increased 1.8 percent to 126.2 billion, the highest point since January.

Rising oil prices continued to pressure the trade balance of the world's biggest energy consumer.

Import volume in March included a 2.027-billion-dollar rise in crude oil imports, mainly on the back of a rise in the price of imported oil, to 53 dollars per barrel in March from 50.71 dollars in February.

The volume of imported oil shot up to 324 million barrels, from 253 million in February.

Auto imports also drove the gap wider, rising 909 billion dollars in March.

Elsewhere in the Commerce Department report, the deficit with the European Union climbed to 7.717 billion dollars in March amid record exports to the EU, at 23.1 billion, and record imports, at 30.8 billion.

Imports from France jumped a whopping 86 percent to 1.4 billion.

The United States also reported significant increases in the gap with its partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement. The deficit with Canada climbed 21.7 percent to 5.7 billion dollars and with Mexico rose 32.1 percent to 6.7 billion.

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