(Yahoo! Finance) - A new report from the US Treasury released Tuesday showed that $27.89 billion in tariff revenue came into US coffers in December, capping off a year that saw President Trump reorder US trade policy.
The release brings the total revenue collected in 2025 to $264.05 billion. It's a historically high annual total — but also the second straight monthly decline after Trump dialed back key tariffs last November.
The peak for the year was October's monthly haul of $31.35 billion. The first decline then came in November, with $30.76 billion in customs duties collected that month.
Tuesday's new reading marks a more than 10% drop from that October high. It's also the latest evidence of how much tariffs are reordering global trade and lessening trade into the US, with new figures for the US trade deficit also recently released.
Commerce Department data showed the US trade gap narrowed in November to $29.4 billion, the lowest level since mid-2009. The data was delayed by last fall's government shutdown.
In both cases, the driving factor is Trump's wide-reaching tariff program, which shook up importers last year and led to global trade resettling (at least in US ports) at lower levels.
Tuesday's tariff revenue figures also underlined just how dramatically the tariff landscape has changed in one year. The US collected $6.81 billion in December 2024, compared to the most recent reading of more than four times that.
The US collected about $79 billion in tariffs in all of 2024.
Tuesday's release of the Treasury Department's Monthly Treasury Statement also showed that the US ran a deficit of $602 billion between October and December — the first three months of the fiscal year — including a deficit of $145 billion in December that far outstripped the tariff revenues despite Trump's frequent claims that tariffs are balancing the budget.
The numbers are unlikely to dampen Trump's enthusiasm for tariffs. Moments after Tuesday's release, President Trump was speaking in Detroit, where he once again touted how the tariffs are resulting in "hundreds of billions coming into the US Treasury."
When Trump began rolling out his tariff regime early last year, monthly revenues skyrocketed from $7.25 billion collected in February and rose every month through October.
The continued step-down in revenue isn't wholly unexpected, considering the Congressional Budget Office recently slashed its estimate of expected tariff receipts for the decade ahead by $1 trillion.
A changing trade landscape
The monthly dip in tariff revenues also has an impact on Trump's wider agenda, which has been heavily reliant, rhetorically at least, on historically high collections.
The president has said in recent months that tariffs could pay for at least 10 different things, far beyond what the tariffs were actually bringing in, even at their peak.
The most recent example came last week when Trump began to push a $500 billion increase in the US military budget, which he specifically claimed is possible thanks to tariffs. That annual military budget increase amounts to more than twice the entire tariff revenue collected in 2025.
Overall, the tariff threats from the White House — as well as uncertainty for importers — are clearly continuing in 2026. Just this week, Trump issued a new threat of 25% tariffs on goods from any nation "doing business" with Iran. There's also the much-watched Supreme Court decision on Trump's "blanket" tariffs that could come as early as Wednesday.
In Detroit on Tuesday, Trump once again said a negative ruling from the Supreme Court would hurt the US. He also claimed that "we have a group that's foreign-centric, China-centric," and added that if the ruling goes against him, "we'll figure something out."
The case at issue is Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, with the lead plaintiff being a company based in Illinois that manufactures and imports its products overseas.
The trade deficit reading, meanwhile, was reflective of less trade — at least involving the US.
A January report from shipping data company Project44 underlined the point. The firm found that in 2025, US imports from China fell 28% while exports to China dropped 38%.
The report found more signs of stabilization in shipping, but at this new lower level, after what it described as a tariff-fueled change that marks "one of the sharpest bilateral trade contractions in recent history."
But the changes to what's moving into and out of US ports may not be applicable around the world.
Last week, the European Union backed a landmark trade deal with four major Latin American nations called Mercosur. This alliance is set to create one of the largest free-trade zones in the world, lowering barriers between nations collectively populated by over 700 million people.
By Ben Werschkul - Washington Correspondent
