Feb. 22—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. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis showed.

This was but part of the devastating result of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade and tariff policy. The next day, Feb. 20, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, struck down the Trump tariffs. Trump based his tariffs on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977, applying the emergency powers in that act completely illegally. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts stated that the way Trump used the IEEPA rendered it unconstitutional, and that only the Congress (under Article I, Section 8) has the power to set tariffs. Trump used the IEEPA Act to bypass and disregard Congress and rule the nation by emergency decree.

The President once more responded to a decision against him with ludicrous and crude language. On February 20, he called the six Justices who ruled against him, “fools and lapdogs.” The White House announced that Trump would use Section 122 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 to impose surcharges or import quotas on imported goods of up to 15% for 150 days. Trump would once more rule by emergency power on a fraudulent basis.

Trump’s penchant for ignoring the U.S. Constitution should not hide the fact that the trade policy—which was supposed to lower the U.S. physical goods trade-deficit—was, as the signature policy of his administration, a failure of monumental proportions. It led to an unprecedented $1.241 trillion trade deficit in physical goods. Here’s how.

For the full 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. That leaves a $1.2 trillion deficit! The burst of physical-goods exports predicted by the Trump Administration did not materialize, as those exports rose by just $9.8 billion per month, while the attempt to decrease imports into the United States 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 Heritage-Billionaire Gang

The Trump Administration policy on trade and tariffs does not come primarily from him, though he fanatically executes it. It originates with the Heritage Foundation, financed and run by, among others, the Sarah Scaife Foundation of Sarah Mellon Scaife, which was heavily shaped and funded by the late billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, who financed the “Get LaRouche Task Force” to frame up and jail Lyndon LaRouche in the 1980s. 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 Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation; and Andrew Hale, 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 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month, allegedly favoring Alexander Hamilton and other nation-builders, but walked the walk of globalist trade policy. The so-called “Trump tariffs” are not coherent with the policy of Hamilton and the American System; they are retributive forms of economic warfare.

Billionaires U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are engineers and enforcers of the tariff-trade policy. Some in the City of London support the policy, knowing it will help destroy the United States.

Record Agricultural Trade Deficit

Though not officially released as yet, the U.S. agricultural goods trade-deficit is projected to have risen to between 47 and 49.5 billion dollars, a new record, the American Farm Bureau Federation has reported. The previous record high was $31.8 billion in 2024—it increased by 50% in a single year under Trump.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that the average U.S. tariff rate on imported goods during 2025 rose from 2.6% to 13%, though some report that the average reached 16-17% by the end of the year.

A study published Jan. 19 by Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy found that 96% of that $264 billion in tariff taxes, received by the U.S. Treasury, was not paid by foreigners but by American importers—wholesalers, retailers, manufacturers importing parts and systems—and by consumers.

The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis report that, compared to the previous year (2024), the U.S. physical goods trade-deficit with China decreased in 2025 by $93.4 billion, to $202.1 billion. But the 2025 U.S. physical-goods trade deficit with Taiwan increased by $73 billion, to $146.8 billion; and the physical goods trade-deficit with Vietnam increased by $54.7 billion, to $178 billion. Imports from these two countries more than offset the decrease in China’s trade surplus with America.

Though he would pretend to not notice, Trump’s tariff and trade policy is crushing the economy.