Trump trade agenda reduces reliance on China and leads to ‘golden age,’ White House tells Congress
President Trump’s trade agenda is paying off by slashing trade imbalances with major global powers in 2025 and reducing America’s reliance on China, the White House said Monday in a report to Congress.
The administration said the goods deficit, or gap between what Americans buy and what U.S. producers sell to other nations, dropped from a monthly average of $100 billion-plus in 2024 to below $90 billion in recent months.
Using tariffs, or duties on imported goods, as leverage also spurred hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment after several administrations allowed manufacturing jobs to slip overseas, the White House told lawmakers.
“By insisting upon fairness, enforcing preexisting authorities, and linking trade outcomes to domestic production and investment, the administration has reshaped the role of trade, using it as a strategic tool to strengthen the American economy and bolster national security,” the administration said in “The Economic Report of the President.”
The report, first obtained by The Washington Times, is an annual document from the White House Council of Economic Advisers that is transmitted to Congress no less than 10 days after the president submits a budget proposal.
This year’s edition amounts to a full-throated defense of Mr. Trump’s aggressive negotiating tactics and deployment of tariffs in the face of Democratic opposition and an adverse Supreme Court ruling in February.
The administration said that by playing hardball and focusing on American production, the U.S. improved its goods trade balance with many countries, including China, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and South Korea.
It said imports from China dropped by more than $97 billion in 2025. The report also outlines hundreds of billions of dollars in energy purchases and manufacturing commitments from countries such as Japan, South Korea, the U.K. and the European Union — big-time economies that struck deals with the U.S. in exchange for a lower tariff rate.
“The exercise of U.S. trade authorities, combined with strategic agreements and frameworks, has improved American access to foreign markets while simultaneously fostering domestic investment,” the report said. “These efforts reinforce the linkage between trade, industrial competitiveness, and national security, creating conditions for the next golden age of economic flourishing.”
The Supreme Court dealt a blow to Mr. Trump’s trade plans this year by striking down his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose nation-by-nation tariffs.
The justices said Mr. Trump usurped Congress’s taxing powers by invoking the 1977 law.
Mr. Trump is rebuilding his tariff base under other authorities, however, and he expects major trade deals to remain intact despite the court ruling.
The president imposed a new 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. He is working to raise that rate to 15%.
The Section 122 tariffs may remain in place for 150 days, after which Congress must approve them.
He is also leaning into trade provisions that allow the president to impose tariffs on national security grounds, or to punish nations for unfair trade practices such as the over-subsidization of industries or the use of forced labor.
Even before the court weighed in, Mr. Trump had been leaning into Section 232 tariffs to rebuild manufacturing in key sectors, including steel, aluminum, copper, lumber, automobiles and trucks.
“The administration has pursued a comprehensive strategy to rebuild the U.S. industrial base, rebalance trade relationships, enforce reciprocity, close loopholes that undermine American workers, and use America’s market power to secure better terms with trading partners,” the economic report said.
Mr. Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs was a major flashpoint of his first year in office. Importers must pay the duties to U.S. customs, and sometimes those costs are passed along to American customers as higher prices.
Democrats’ warnings of rampant inflation from Mr. Trump’s imports did not come true.
However, liberal and conservative critics of the levies said Americans could ill-afford one-time price increases after the president campaigned on lowering costs. The tariffs also made the Federal Reserve reluctant to slash interest rates, saying the stop-and-start nature of Mr. Trump’s plans made it hard to gauge the impact on prices.
The White House economic report on Monday said Americans want Mr. Trump to take bold actions on behalf of American workers.
“Foreign unfair trading practices and beggar-thy-neighbor trade and industrial policies in other countries have created tremendous problems across the U.S. economy and negate the efficiencies of trade, to the detriment of American workers and industry,” the report said. “When President Trump returned to office in January 2025, he did so with a clear mandate from the American people: to confront a trade system that had drifted far from balance, fairness, and reciprocity, and to restore trade policy as a tool that serves American workers, industries, and national security.”
