The U.S. trade deficit barely changed from 2024 to 2025, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. Despite President Trump’s campaign to reduce the gap through the aggressive use of tariffs, the trade deficit totaled $901.5 billion last year, just 0.2% lower than the $903.5 billion deficit recorded in 2024.
Exports of goods and services came to $3.4 trillion in 2025, an increase of $200 billion, while imports totaled $4.3 trillion, an increase of $198 billion. The deficit in the trade of goods rose to a record high of more than $1.2 trillion.
Although Trump’s tariffs did not have a significant effect on overall trade levels in 2025, they did alter the mix of nations sending goods to the U.S. Imports from China, one of Trump’s primary targets, fell by nearly 30%. But imports from nations producing similar goods, including Vietnam and Mexico, rose to record highs as U.S. firms sought substitute suppliers.
Erica York, a tax policy expert at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, said that she is not surprised that Trump’s tariffs had little effect on the trade gap, which most economists believe is shaped largely by domestic economic factors, including the size of the federal budget deficit. “Tariffs are not the dial to turn if you want to change the overall balance of trade,” she told the Washington Post.
Trump offered a very different take on the matter, claiming before the release of the annual data that the trade deficit had been reduced by 78% — an apparent reference to the monthly numbers in October, but certainly not an accurate summary of the 2025 data overall. Trump also predicted that the trade deficit would become a surplus in 2026.
