America’s Trade Deficit Just Had Its Best Quarter in 33 YearsJohn Carney 19 Feb 2026
Trump Tariffs Achieve What Economists Said Was ImpossibleThe Wall Street Journal’s headline on Thursday’s trade data declared that “America Imported a Record Amount Last Year Despite Seismic Trade Policy Changes,” emphasizing that the annual deficit “was little changed” and concluding that the tariffs “did little to dissuade Americans from importing.” Bloomberg declared: “US Notches One of Its Biggest Annual Trade Gaps Since 1960.”
Sounds scary enough to make some doubt that President Trump’s tariffs were having any effect at all. Maybe all those anti-tariff pundits were right and tariffs could not rebalance trade. That, of course, is precisely the reaction the stories were intended to provoke. All that sturm-und-drang over a slight decline in the trade deficit.
Fortunately, this framing obscures what may be the most dramatic trade rebalancing in modern American history.
The Real Story Is in the TrendWhile the annual 2025 deficit was essentially flat at $901.5 billion (down just $2.1 billion from 2024), this masks a seismic shift in the second half of the year—and particularly in the fourth quarter.
November 2025 posted the largest rolling three-month trade deficit decline in recorded history, with the three-month average falling $35.3 billion year-over-year, a 45 percent drop. This surpasses even the peak months of the 2009 Great Recession.
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https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2026/02/19/breitbart-business-digest-americas-trade-deficit-just-had-its-best-quarter-in-33-years/
