U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the country’s trade deficit had contracted sharply due to his trade tariffs, and that the U.S. was set for a trade surplus in 2026– its first in decades.
In a social media post, Trump claimed that the U.S. trade deficit “HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES.” He did not specify the time period or his reasoning behind the 78% figure.
Trump added that “(the deficit) WILL GO INTO POSITIVE TERRITORY DURING THIS YEAR.”
The U.S. goods and services trade deficit slid to $27.62 billion in October 2025 from a record-high $140.5 billion in March 2025– a roughly 80% drop, government data and Investing.com calculations showed.
But the trade deficit rose to $56.82 billion in November.
Trump’s comments came just ahead of official trade data for December, due on Thursday. The print is expected to show a trade surplus of $55.50 billion in the month-- the country’s first positive monthly balance of trade since 1975, according to government data.
The U.S. is still expected to log an over $800 billion trade deficit in 2025, compared to a record-high $1.2 trillion deficit in 2024. 2025’s deficit is largely due to a surge in imports in the first quarter of the year, as local importers stockpiled on a variety of goods before Trump’s so-called liberation day tariffs in April.
The goods trade deficit in particular is expected to remain close to record highs, of around $1.2 trillion.
Trump introduced trade tariffs on a wide range of goods in 2025, while also slapping tariffs on hundreds of countries, ranging from as low as 10% to as high as 50%.
While the president pared back a bulk of his steepest tariffs, following negotiations and trade deals with several major countries, his tariffs did spur a decline in imports, especially from China.
U.S. good imports from China slid to $288 billion in the January-November 2025 period, down from $401 billion in the same period in 2024.
But the drop in Chinese imports was largely offset by increased imports from several other Asian and European countries, government data showed.
Source: Investing