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By 2025, the United States was running a trade deficit of roughly billion U.S. dollars. This was a slight increase from recorded a year earlier. The country has not held a surplus trade balance since 1975. That long-running imbalance has concerned policymakers for decades. For the Trump White House, it helped justify the introduction of sweeping tariffs on global trade.

What is trade deficit?

A trade deficit is simply the gap between what a country imports and what it exports. If U.S. exports exceed imports, the balance is in surplus; if imports run higher, it’s in deficit. That shortfall can point to weak domestic production or to something less troubling: consumers with enough spending power to buy more than the country makes, as in the United States. It also reflects broader macroeconomic forces, since deficits tend to mirror capital inflows and a country’s appetite for investment.

North America leads U.S. trade

The United States’ closest trading partners are its neighbors. * and * ranked among the largest export markets for the U.S., helped by decades of economic integration under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The agreement is now replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). On the import side, * became the biggest source of goods, with * and close behind.