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President Trump bragged this week that his tariffs have slashed the United States trade deficit by 78 percent, a bold claim he posted on Truth Social that quickly drew fire from pundits and economists. The government’s own numbers tell a more complicated story: the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the trade gap widened to $70.3 billion in December 2025 and the annual deficit for 2025 remained near historic highs.
Policymakers and voters should look past the headlines and at the details: December’s imports rose to $357.6 billion while exports fell to $287.3 billion, driving a goods deficit that month to $99.3 billion. Those are not idle monthly blips—they show how quickly global supply chains and corporate behavior can erase short-term gains.
For the full year 2025, the goods and services deficit came in at $901.5 billion, a hair smaller than 2024’s $903.5 billion, which proves the deeper problem: America still buys far more than it sells. That sliver of change does not vindicate the naysayers who claimed tariffs would never move the needle, but it also underscores that tough policies need time and consistent enforcement to reshape decades of trade patterns.
Remember what happened earlier last year: a record surge in the trade gap coincided with businesses rushing to import ahead of the administration’s sweeping tariffs, and later volatility produced a dramatic swing between March’s spike and October’s dip. Trump’s 78 percent figure appears to cherry-pick a temporary fall from that March peak to an October trough, rather than measuring sustained annual success, a nuance the press loves to weaponize or ignore as convenient.
Still, conservatives should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. President Trump has shaken the status quo and forced trading partners and multinational firms to rethink pricing and supply chains—exactly what a country serious about revitalizing manufacturing must do. Washington now needs to finish the job: keep pressure on unfair trading partners, back American industry with sensible incentives, and stop letting economists and pundits define success by a single monthly headline.
