The U.S. physical goods trade deficit rose to $1.241 trillion in 2025, the highest the United States has ever recorded, statistics released on Feb. 19 by the U.S. Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic showed.
For the year 2025, U.S. physical goods imports rose by $143.2 billion to $3.438 trillion, while U.S. physical goods exports rose by $117.7 billion to $2.198 trillion. The burst of physical goods exports predicted by the Trump administration did not materialize, as they rose by $9.8 billion per month, while the attempt to decrease imports into the U.S. failed, as they increased by $11.9 billion per month.
As for the 2025 U.S. trade deficit for combined goods and services, it was $901.5 billion. In 2024, it was $903.5 billion; the year-on-year “improvement” was a negligible 0.2%.
The Trump administration policy trade and tariff does not come primarily from him: It originates with the Heritage Foundation, financed and run by, among others, the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, which was heavily shaped and funded by late billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, who financed the “Get LaRouche Task Force” to frame up and jail Lyndon LaRouche. The current chairman of the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Michael Gleba, is vice chairman of the Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees.
Members of the Heritage Foundation who helped draft and impose the so-called “Trump trade and tariff policy” are Peter Navarro, who authored the trade and tariff section of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and is currently Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing for President Trump; Kevin Robert, president of the Heritage Foundation; and Andrew Hale, the Senior Policy Analyst for Trade Policy at Heritage.
Presiding over U.S. trade relations in 2025 is U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who talked-the-talk in Davos last month, favoring Alexander Hamiltion and other nation-builders, but walked-the-walk of globalist trade policy. The so-called “Trump tariffs” are not in the mode of Alexander Hamilton and the American System, but are retributive forms of economic warfare.
