{"id":371735,"date":"2025-12-26T19:27:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T19:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/371735\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T19:27:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T19:27:18","slug":"trumps-tariffs-actually-slashed-the-deficit-from-a-record-136-4-billion-to-less-than-half-that-heres-what-else-they-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/371735\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s tariffs actually slashed the deficit from a record $136.4 billion to less than half that. Here’s what else they did"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since returning to the White House in January, President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0has overturned decades of U.S. trade policy \u2014 building a wall of tariffs around what used to be a wide open economy.<\/p>\n

His double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country have disrupted global commerce and strained the budgets of consumers and businesses worldwide. They have also raised tens of billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury.<\/p>\n

Trump has argued that his steep new import taxes are necessary to bring back wealth that was\u00a0\u201cstolen\u201d<\/a>\u00a0from the U.S. He says they will narrow America\u2019s decades-old trade deficit and bring manufacturing back to the country. But upending the global supply chain has proven costly for\u00a0households facing rising prices<\/a>. And the erratic way the president rolled out his tariffs \u2014 announcing them, then suspending or altering them before conjuring up new ones \u2014 made 2025 one of the most turbulent economic years in recent memory.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at the impact of Trump\u2019s tariffs over the last year, in four charts.<\/p>\n

Effective US tariff rate<\/p>\n

A key number for the overall impact of tariffs on U.S. consumers and businesses is the \u201ceffective\u201d tariff rate \u2014 which, unlike headline figures imposed by Trump for specific trade actions, provides an average based on the actual imports coming into the country.<\/p>\n

In 2025, per data from the Yale Budget Lab, the effective U.S. tariff rate peaked in April. But it\u2019s still far higher than the average seen at the start of the year. Before finalizing shifts in consumption, November\u2019s effective tariff rate was nearly 17% \u2014 seven times greater than January\u2019s average and the highest seen since 1935.<\/p>\n

Tariff revenue vs America\u2019s trade deficit<\/p>\n

Among selling points to justify his tariffs, Trump has repeatedly said they would reduce America\u2019s longstanding\u00a0trade deficit<\/a>\u00a0and bring\u00a0revenue into the Treasury.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s higher tariffs are certainly raising money. They\u2019ve raked in more than $236 billion this year through November \u2014 much more than in years past. But they still account for just a fraction of the federal government\u2019s total revenue. And they haven\u2019t raised nearly enough to justify the president\u2019s\u00a0claim<\/a>\u00a0that tariff revenue could replace federal income taxes \u2014 or allow for\u00a0windfall dividend checks for Americans.<\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. trade deficit, meanwhile, has fallen significantly since the start of the year. The trade gap peaked to a monthly record of $136.4 billion in March, as consumers and businesses\u00a0hurried to import foreign products<\/a>\u00a0before Trump could impose his tariffs on them. The trade gap narrowed to $52.8 billion in September, the latest month for which data is available. But the year-to-date deficit was still running 17% ahead of January-September 2024.<\/p>\n

Import shifts with America\u2019s biggest trading partners<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s 2025 tariffs hit nearly every country in the world \u2014 including America\u2019s biggest trading partners. But his policies have had the biggest impact on U.S. trade with China, once the biggest source of American imports and now No. 3 behind Canada and Mexico. U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports\u00a0now come to 47.5%,<\/a>\u00a0according to calculations by Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.<\/p>\n

The value of goods coming into the U.S. from China fell nearly 25% during the first three-quarters of the year. Imports from Canada also dropped. But the value of products from Mexico, Vietnam and Taiwan grew year-to-date.<\/p>\n

Market swings<\/p>\n

For investors, the most volatile moments on the stock market this year arrived amid some of the most volatile moments for Trump\u2019s tariffs.<\/p>\n

The S&P 500, an index for the biggest public companies in the U.S., saw its biggest daily and weekly swings in April \u2014 and largest monthly losses and gains in March and June, respectively.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Need a recap of how Trump\u2019s trade actions unfolded in 2025? See\u00a0a timeline here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since returning to the White House in January, President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0has overturned decades of U.S. trade policy \u2014 building…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,5948,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-371735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-tariffs-and-trade","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-united-states-of-america","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}