Federal data shows that the United States’ trade deficit rose to $70.3 billion in December — an increase of $17.3 billion from November.
In 2025, the full-year trade deficit for goods and services was at $901.5 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis said. While this is $2.1 billion less than the $903.5 billion it was at in 2024, this only represents a 0.2% decrease in total, and is still one of the largest deficits recorded. In addition, the gap in the goods trade reached a record $1.24 trillion.
This comes one day after President Donald Trump claimed on Truth Social that the trade deficit had been reduced by 78% and that it was due to tariffs on other countries. He went on to say the deficit will go into “POSITIVE TERRITORY DURING THIS YEAR.”
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Forbes writes that the president could be referring to the 79% decrease in the trade gap between March 2025, when it was at $140.5 billion, and October 2025 ($29.4 billion). Trump has also previously compared the monthly trade deficit in January 2025 to the deficit in October of that year, FactCheck.org pointed out.
However, economic experts say this is not an ideal way to measure trade imbalances with other nations.
“Monthly trade balance figures are extremely volatile,” Kyle Handley, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, told FactCheck.org, which is owned by the Annenberg Public Policy Center in Pennsylvania. These numbers “reflect timing of shipments, energy prices, seasonal adjustment noise and one-off transactions,” Handley added.
“[L]ooking at changes from one month to another is not a reliable way to assess whether the trade deficit is rising or falling in any meaningful sense,” Handley said. Instead, people should be looking at trade trends for several months, or even a full year if possible, he said.
December exports totaled $287.3 billion, $5 billion less than in November. Imports in December were at $357.6 billion — $12.3 billion more than in November.
“After all the tariff headlines and swings in the data, the trade deficit barely budged in 2025,” Nationwide Financial Market Economist Oren Klachkin said in a note, according to Bloomberg. “With the peak tariff drag now likely behind us, we expect trade to settle into a more predictable rhythm.”
In a statement to Straight Arrow News, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the data showed a 17% decline from April through December 2025 over the same time period in 2024, and defended Trump’s “ambitious reciprocal trade agenda.”
Trump’s tariffs
Trump imposed tariffs on imports from virtually every nation in April 2025, claiming authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This 1977 law, known as the IEEPA, allows the president to have broad authority to declare a state of emergency in cases of “unusual or extraordinary” threats to the U.S. and to regulate economic transactions and international trade.
The legality of these tariffs under the IEEPA is set to be decided by the Supreme Court. Three lower courts have already found them illegal, and the Trump administration has appealed these rulings.
