Trade and tariffs in 2025 - this really didn't work, did it?

As you may have heard, the US Supreme Court told Donald Trump on Friday that he had no right to go out and slap tariffs on country without having Congress pass a law allowing him to do so. And naturally, Trump responded by whining like a bitch and planning to put in new worldwide tariffs of 10%.... wait, 15% (go ahead and try, old man).

In light of that, we got information about what happened to the flow of imports and exports in 2025 in reaction to Tump's tariff plans, and as you'll see 2025 didn't have a very different trade deficit than 2024, and December saw the trade deficit go up compared to the lows of October.

Trade deficits were volatile throughout 2025 as importers responded to President Trump's shifting tariff announcements, which have upended the global landscape but haven't significantly dented the US trade deficit, at least so far.

The data released Thursday by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis also provided an annual tally for 2025, totaling trade in both goods and services at $901.5 billion. The total for 2024, the last year of Joe Biden's presidency, was $903.5 billion…. The new monthly reading, delayed by the recent government shutdown, was the second consecutive increase following October's trade deficit of just under $30 billion — the lowest figure seen since 2009, which Trump and his aides often touted.

The new December reading saw US imports fall by about $5 billion to $287.3 billion, while imports jumped by $12.3 billion to $357.6 billion. Goods imported in 2025 rose overall, despite Trump's tariffs, to a total of about $3.4 trillion last year.

I do think it's important to note that how we got to that deficit of just over $900 billion is very different when comparing 2024 and 2025.

That ballooning deficit for the first part of 2025 reflects front-running that American businesses did, trying to bring in more imports before Trump announced tariffs on those products, and then backing off after Trump made his infamous “Liberation Day” announcement in April.

Meanwhile, the value of US exports were larger in every month of 2025 than the same month was in 2024, even as some countries put on retaliatory tariffs on US products.

So that’s good news. I would also guess that the 10% decline in the US dollar in 2025 contributed to this increase in exports, since it makes American projects cheaper overseas.

In looking at the figures, December 2025’s trade deficit of $70.3 million was nearing the monthly amounts that we had for much of 2024, which ranged between $71 billion and $81 billion in every month between April and November. But for now, I’ll say that we are on trend for a lower trade deficit in 2026, with exports going higher in 2025 and imports being lower in the second half of 2025. That would seem to indicate the tariffs are working if you only care about reducing the country’s trade deficit.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the average American might be better off as a result of that smaller trade deficit. It’s indisputable that tariffs raise prices from what they otherwise would have been, which is where I remind you that the New York Fed said this month that 90% of Trump’s tariffs were paid for by American companies and consumers.

In addition, employment in manufacturing continued to slide in 2025, so businesses weren’t onshoring to the US as a result of tariffs (ignore any media events you see about “future activity”, read the numbers).

Lastly, tariff revenue offset some of the extra deficits caused by Trump Tax Scam 2.0 and related increases in spending on ICE and the military (and grifting) in Trump's first year. But it plateaued in the second half of the year has been declining in recent months, as imports dropped and some tariffs were removed.

Other than bringing in a little more revenue (but nowhere near enough to make up for tax cuts or increased spending elsewhere), what have Trump's tariffs actually helped our economy or standard of living? I can't see it, likely because there is no strategy to help American manufacturing or offset the extra costs of these policies for everyday Americans. But the senile fool in the White House is going to screech and double down on it anyway, and the gutless GOPs in Congress aren't doing anything to stop it.

So now we have to waste a lot more time and effort to tell them "NO, DO YOU NOT GET IT?", and to get the hundreds of billions of dollars back that were taken away by this idiocy (and the Supreme Court's dawdling on the issue) in 2025. And it is infuriating to us in the non-elite, reality-based world.