US tariff war isn't working: trade deficit rose to $131 billion

So, the US started this tariff war a couple of years back, and even Trump is still keeping it going. The idea was to tackle the growing trade deficit where the US is importing way more than it's exporting. Honestly, production costs in the US are super high, so importing stuff is just cheaper these days. According to some fresh stats from the US Department of Commerce, the trade deficit shot up to $131 billion in January 2025 from $98.1 billion in December. Last year, the total trade deficit hit $918.4 billion, which is a jump from $784.9 billion in 2023. Clearly, we’re on an upward trend with this deficit. What’s really interesting is the rising trade deficit with India. Looks like my hunch that India might take over China’s place is starting to pan out. The figures show that the deficit with India increased to $13.2 billion in the fourth quarter. Sure, it's a long way from $129.2 billion in total trade with a $45.7 billion deficit with India, compared to $582.4 billion trade and a $295.4 billion deficit with China, but the pattern is kinda familiar. These numbers really help explain why the US is going hard on its economic stance against the rest.

I do not know much about this tariff economy thing than people are complaining that it will later lead to inflation as Trump is indirectly imposing the tariff on United States citizens as usual. If foreign goods price increase, definitely local goods price will increase. Also some people speculate that at the end, either United States will not be the one that this will still later be favoured or probably the the loser. I think there is something that should be done than thinking of encouraging production in the United States through increasing import tariffs. I think he already knows what is going on and he has started to pause the import tariff on some goods imported from Canada and Mexico and also increasing the goods exempted from his new tariffs on Canada and Mexico that were imposed this week. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/03/06/trump-tariffs-live-updates-businesses-warn-of-ripple-down-effects-from-tariffs-because-of-rising-costs.html https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y03qleevvo.amp Why is Trump making 25% import tariff on Canada when the US export to Canada than import? Or he thinks people are smuggling goods from Canada. I do not think Canada deserves this. You are right about this. Decreasing the dollar price will let the world not to have interest in the United States dollars anymore as it will significantly affect countries foreign reserves. I think the effect will also be very negative on the US as more countries may fully go for BRICS idea to ditch the dollar which might even later lead to the development of the world's currency. United States can not control other countries. And as your posted, no country will do that.

Looking at the figures, the trend clearly shows the trade deficit isn’t improving. They’re trying to address it by increasing tariffs, but if this only worsens the situation, they’ll likely reconsider. The data already showed that even before the tariff hike, there was already a trade deficit. so now that they’ve raised it, things might get even worse. The thing is, tariffs are supposed to reduce the trade deficit, but the data suggests otherwise. This makes it a real challenge for them to reverse the growing trend because, in the long run, it’s not good for the U.S. economy.

Donald Trump promised his supporters so many things. And some of his campaign promises cannot be implemented without harming American society. He knows that this tariff war will bring nothing but suffering and pain to the US economy but wants to please his supporters. Consumers will always prefer imported goods because it is cheaper than local products. Trump also knows that he cannot sustain this tariff war for a long time. Trump's intention is just to pretend that he is fulfilling his campaign promises and within a few months, all these tariffs war will end. He wants to be seen as powerful and wants other presidents to bow to him. Justin Trudeau has refused to be a puppet but it seems Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is loyal.

Nobody wants to do it but there are some countries that will budge and give into bullying. We've seen what they did in Panama. It is worth mentioning that the Plaza Accord in 1985 was to force Japan to increase their fiat exchange rate and willingly destroy their own economy to help US economy survive! I just heard another thing that Japan has announced they'll now invest even more into U.S. buying more of their debt! which is why the experts say that the day dollar dumps, the first economy that would be destroyed is Japanese economy...

Literally, the United States cannot control other countries, but just like you said here. Any country that is in debt to the US will surely suffer if anything happens to the US economy. Of course their economy will crumble more than the US economy. Because the United States will surely find a of over overcome any problem they are facing. Employment rate has reduced to 4.1% in Trump's regime. About 151,000 jobs were opened, which many citizens have been offered jobs. The citizens have no choice but to pay the stipulated tariff for each household. US Adds 151000 Jobs in February, Unemployment Rate 4.1%

remember.. stats are based on pre-trump tariff numbers.. we wont find out how tariffs affect trade until many months AFTER the tariffs kick in.. so lets wait and see also worth noting that the 131b deficit is just a import minus export math summation Imports:    $401.2 Billion Exports:    $269.8 Billion Deficit:    $131.4 Billion so if less imports happen EG just 10% less imports and a simple 5% increase of exports Imports:    $361.2 Billion Exports:    $283.3 Billion Deficit:    $77.9 Billion the deficit changes by a noticeable amount more then 5%-10% (41%) .. also worth noting international businesses know of ways around tariffs, lets take freeports as an example car manufacturers can assemble an EV driveshaft and battery bay chassis(base frame of car) export from international (import to US) freeport. and incur no tariff to pay. then at the us side fix the chassis to the body work, call it a Us built car and on leaving the us freeport to go to a car dealership the dealership is buying domestic thus no tariff even if the main components (motor and electronics) is made in china enjoy that thought yep car manufacturers can have 2 factories in 2 countries thus not trigger the tariff as its not a sold delivery when transporting to the US, and then convert it to being a US built final product to then not charge the dealership a tariff when actually sold/delivered to customer the car manufacturer does not need to build a whole new factory in the US. they just need to lease warehousing at a freeport, move the final stage production machines from china to the US which doesnt take much time. and hey-presto. unlike fabricating and building a whole car start to finish factory(multiple different machines), all they need in the US is the final assembly of completed parts section .. the reason why other countries dont like the tariffs has nothing to do with the tariff being charged to them.. its actually that they know when businesses move final assembly to the US. the later sell of final goods and delivery to customer is no longer international but US bought. so the international country does not get its sales tax/V.A.T as the sale did not occur on the international side. so its not about charging a international countries treasury more in the form of tariffs. its the international countries treasury losing out on sales/vat tax lets take a example (dummy numbers) of how things will change imagine china can make a phone for $200 (parts($100) and labour($100)) and sell it for $400 + chinese sales tax rate(13%) = $452 imagine US can made a phone for $400 (parts($200) and labour($200)) start to finish all in the US... and sell it for $800+ ussales tax rate(5%) = $840 many smart savvi consumers would buy a chinese import and save nearly 50% right but imagine the tariff kicked in. the savvi consumer buying an import would then need to pay $452 +25% tariff=$565 now imagine the phone brand moved final assembly to the US so US made a phone for $250 (chinese parts($100), chinese labour($90) us labour($60)) co-built china and the US... and sell it for $500+ us sales tax rate(5%) = $525 and hey presto. us is now cheaper then china. and china is not getting its $52 sales tax

The follower base he has is not really interested in "winning" as much as they are interested in making others lose. So for example, if they put tariffs to Canada, and that hurts Canada, then they are happy about it and do not care if that also hurts USA as well. If anyone didn't want USA to be hurt, they wouldn't elect Trump to begin with, everyone knew from the start that he would hurt USA and that was obvious from a mile away. But they wanted "revenge" or something, like hurt others, stop help to Africa, stop funding NATO, stop trading with Canada, basically just get out and say that we hate you all to the world. Did he do that? He did. That is all his followers asked for and he delivered so his followers are happy with him.

I just really hope he removes these tariffs soon & the threat of them in the future. Markets hate uncertainty, we are all losing a lot of money due to this. Bitcoin has been on a downward slide since inauguration day. We all want to see this reverse, I really hope that happens soon. These constant daily red candles are getting tiresome.

They are actually not doing anything beneficial to each of them as these leader just create trouble to each country. If Trump would continue to increase their tariff then provably that they will also get affected with these matters. Its somehow great that he pause this for Mexico and Canada https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-trump-pauses-mexico-tariffs-april-2/ And hopefully he would realize that this will just cause big trouble so let see if Trump would officially stop this crazy implementations they made.

I wonder if Trump and his goons understand, that cutting down regulatory oversight for food safety will cut the import of it as well. Counter tariffs don't even need to be about retaliation. They can stay up in the future as they will a unnecessary burden on health care. Trump also blames that they don't see American cars in Europe, which is false. Europeans have bought Teslas in the past, but i am guessing that's over now because of Elon. And main reason we aren't buying those big American cars is that they are so large that they don't even fit on our roads or parking spaces. I am not even joking. It's not like we are going to rebuild whole infra just to get those, especially with our current relations. Then there are things like Europeans consider flashy big cars impractical in terms of fuel consumption. And that are also considered to be tacky and transparent compensation attempts for insecure people. I wonder if he would like to complain that we aren't buying as much maga hats as americans.

US is having the opportunity of doing all these because of the dominance USD has in the global market, that is why you can discover some of the reasons BRICS are trying to desociate themselves from the use of this global reserve currency called dollar and have their own separate ways, I do say it, if US is doing you favor, then check well and make some findings on the conditions around it, you will discover that it's more of harm to you than the help you think they are offering, I know that the issue of increase in the tarrif plan will cause a lot of exposures to things we don't pay much attention to before now but are happening.

I knew it would failed woefully because you don't go about threatening everyone at the same time and think they will all be on their kneels begging you without looking for alternatives. People will explore other alternatives or find a way of navigating through the system to remain profitable in business. Even if he wanted to raise the tariffs, he would have taken it one step at a time with less noise. What Trump failed to understand was that any hike in tariff would actually be paid by the American final consumers and not the people he claimed to be targeting because there was no way they would sell their goods at loss because they want to sell in the US. As you hike tariff, they simply raise the price of their goods and the consumers will bear the brunt. If Trump do not take time, the American people will be subjected to unprecedented hardship due to rise in the cost of living and I'm sure they will revolt against him and his policy.

Yes, and as I said the economic war in general started way before Trump took office the first time! Meaning mainly by Obama. The US regime keeps changing tactics and increase the pressure thinking they can strongarm others into obeying their demands! The tariffs Trump set in his first term were continued by Biden and are still continued in Trump's second term. Their numbers have grown over the years as well. So we are seeing a trend of increasing deficit and inflation in the US. Not exactly. For example with China: _|2023|2024|ChangeImports|$426.8|$438.9|+$12.1Exports|$147.7|$143.5|-$4.2Deficit|$279.1|$295.4|+$16.3

If what Trump is doing is implementing a policy that the United States has been working on for years, then his method is very hasty and reckless to a large extent. Trump is practicing political blackmail to implement a plan that could destroy everyone, starting with the American economy. According to all experts, these tariffs will lead to a sharp decline in American economic growth, and the negative impact will extend for at least two years, with expectations of a decline in economic output. Then, in this global situation, the United States is losing allies that will benefit China, whose markets will expand to Africa, Asia and the Americas. I can understand that economic sanctions are a means of political blackmail and were used by the last US presidents, but it is certainly not the strategy that will reduce the trade deficit.

if you are zoomed in on 2024 stats saying "blame trump 2025".. i laugh if you are slightly zoomed out to see 2023 to 2024 and say "blame trump 2016".. i laugh heck i dont like trump, he is a clown, but you seem to be putting a paper straw into the dem's butthole and sucking up all you can please remind yourself of all the economics of 2020-2024 EG covid.. sanctions. ukraine did you know that alot of business boycotted trading with russia and china in 2020-2024 due to china helping russia fight ukraine 2020+ yep the US didnt want to be associated with china and russia so less exports from the US to russia-china area purely as a protest against the russian war this was stuff not even "tariff" related.. but boycotts .. anyway.. if you are also trying to insinuate that trump has made so many changes in the last 47 days that it has changed things already.. .. um nope. it takes time to see results, we have yet to see how things change good or bad yet. heck. most tariffs have been "announced" from january, feb, march but didnt even actually start then.. most are not affective until april+.(Q2) EG "reciprocal tariffs start april 2nd" (to negotiate new deals) EG pause on USMCA tariff on autos (to get auto final assembly in the US) so we wont see results until Q3 when they look back at Q2 also the tariff is not a $$ money sucker.. its actually a negotiation stick to get other deals in place the trick was not to just charge consumers XX% and sit back.. it was to give a threat to other countries that unless they come to the negotiation table consumers would end up going elsewhere and not earning other countries their sales tax anyway.. lets wait and see how things play out.. trump is playing a different game than he was playing in 2016 term.. seems he hired some better advisers this time, including speech writers(he is actually making sense and not rambling into wonderland per question this time) .. oh and last fun fact trump implemented more tariffs on china 2018 and the deficit 2018-2020 went from $400b to $300b so it seemed to have helped oh by the way.. america has had less tariffs on china than china had on the US yep US tariff-ed china at 3% but china tariffed US at 8% at the start of 2018 before things escalated even with the "phase one agreement" that stabilised the trade war... from 2020 china tariff on us export 21.3% average.. US tariff on chinese export 19.3% by 2023 china only dropped to 21.1%.. so all along 2018-2023 china were more 'tariff as a stick' against US, the US were slapping china with a lighter stick so china were stick whacking US more than US was whacking china..

And there is another interesting nuance here - China cannot stop selling its parts for 100 dollars, because for an export-oriented economy, with huge explicit or implicit subsidies from the state, it would be like death. And other markets do not have the consumer characteristics to buy these parts for 100 dollars on a mass and regular basis, as the US can do. Nuances, they are everywhere

Exactly. The problem is that they have run out of time. 20-30 years ago, US was at its peak of power. USSR had just been dissolved and for the first time in history world was enduring unipolarity. For example when Bush wanted to invade Iraq and carry out massacres there, he could easily force everyone to cooperate and even contribute (eg. Ukraine that is playing the victim these days supplied one of the largest number of troops to slaughter Iraqi civilians). Today, after 3 decades of ridiculously costly wars US regime started, not only they have run out of money (and are in debt) but others like China have gotten so far ahead that USA can never catch up. This is why they feel they have no time to waste, therefore the hasty and reckless behavior that is pushing everyone away and forcing them to even retaliate! Specially because US is getting weaker every day and the unipolar world is long dead as we've entered a New World Order with multiple power poles. I'm not blaming anyone specially since it doesn't matter who the puppet in Oval Office is, I am just narrating and analyzing. And if you like zooming out, you should really zoom out to truly see the trend of how this deficit has been growing. 1990 started with the deficit being $66 billion and ended by reaching $412 billion. Under W. Bush and his war of terror against the world that deficit set a new record at $816 billion before 2008 economic crash destroyed global trade and decreased that deficit temporarily to $504 billion. But the rising trend never changed. Today that deficit (2024) sits at $918 billion and rising rapidly. During all these decades the US regime has been using various tactics to decrease that deficit (mainly trying to destroy the economy of other countries to stay ahead) and failing. One of their tactics have been tariffs that have failed to change that trend. BTW tariffs at this point is mostly noise that Trump makes and mainly for weak countries like Canada and Europe that think themselves as allies of US; US regime's main tactic for more powerful countries is proxy wars (hint: Taiwan and Uyghur terrorists in east of China).

Countries like Russia, China, Iran, etc have survived Western sanctions. These nations are no longer scared of the US sanction threat because they have been able to diversify their trading partnership. They have been able to seek new markets that have enhanced mutual benefits. Canada, Mexico, and the European Union are shaking because of Trump's tariff because they have designed their economy to depend on the US in some major sectors. Europe and other allies have always supported the US in coordinating tariffs on other countries. Now it is time for them to taste the poison they have helped prepare for others. It will be difficult for the US to whittle down the economic influence of China and India. The world is changing, and Trump is making it change fast.

I don't understand this sentence. Why is production in the colony expensive? By that logic, postal services and every type of local business shouldn't exist because it's too expensive compared to other countries. I think that if companies appreciate working class and lower salary for those who work in back, get highest pay and do nothing half of the working time, like product designers, developers, marketing specialists and so on, and they'll also lower profit margins, then they'll be very competitive.