The U.S. trade deficit jumped to the highest level in nine years, according to a Department of Commerce report on Tuesday. Despite President Donald Trump’s repeated promise to shrink trade deficits, it rose 12.1% to $566 billion during his first year in office and leaped 5.1% in December alone.

And this may be just the beginning of an upward trend following Trump’s tax cuts, according to economists. Derek Scissors, resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute calculates the tax cuts may boost the trade deficit by $200 billion. A BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research report also expects the share of the trade deficit in GDP to grow 0.2 percentage points by 2020.

It’s not uncommon to see the trade deficit jump following tax cuts, just look at the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts under President George W. Bush, and President Ronald Reagan’s cuts in the early 1980s. But Trump has been especially vocal about lowering the deficit gap, citing it as a failure of previous trade policy. He called the trade deficit “unacceptable.” “We are going to start whittling that down, and as fast as possible,” Trump said after his trip to Asia last November.

Here is how the tax cuts may actually do the complete opposite and widen the trade deficit.

More spending: As corporate America cheers for the tax cuts and offers perks including bigger paychecks to employees, increased income is likely to bring more consumption, which fuels the need for foreign goods (a fundamental of the trade deficit). Thus, boosting imports and worsening the trade balance. With the economy at full employment right now and output relatively constrained, Harvard Professor Jeffrey Frankel believes the impact could be more problematic, because “the increase in spending afforded by tax cuts goes entirely, rather than only partly, into the current-account deficit,” he wrote in January.

Inflation and stronger dollar: Increasing consumer demand may also lead to inflation, push prices for U.S. products higher and make foreign goods more attractive to domestic buyers. To achieve the tax cut, the government is likely to borrow more, which will push the increasing budget deficit even higher. With the Federal Reserve expected to raise interest rates in response to demand increase, the dollar is also likely to be stronger, which makes U.S export less competitive in terms of price in the international market.

More foreign direct investment: This is exactly what Trump hopes to achieve with the corporate tax cuts, you may think. In Davos, he sent the message “America is open for business” to invite foreign investors. Some manufacturers have already been moving from Asia to the U.S. for lower production costs and government incentives, a trend that’s likely to continue with tax cuts. But more investments in the U.S. count as capital imports from abroad. More money flooding in may also contribute to a larger trade deficit.