Name: One Year In: How Trump’s Economy is Doing?
Uploaded: 2026-01-17T18:26:12.000Z
Duration: 9 min 45 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Donald Trump completely reshaped the US economy.

He crashed the entire stock market, introduced as high tariffs as the Great Depression, and

The US economy hasn't experienced anything like that in over 100 years.

And according to Donald Trump, he has built the greatest economy of all time.

But on the other side, critics argue that is actively destroying the US Economy.

So let's give it a closer look and find out what exactly is happening.

One of the ways to measure the economy is to simply take a look at the GDP growth.

Now, to understand whether this number is great or not, we simply have to compare it to other similar economies.

So relative to the UK, the United States is doing great.

The French GDP did not even grow by a single percentage point.

So compared to other G7 countries, the United States is actually doing a great job.

If you compare the US to China, China's real GDP growth was 5.2% or which is substantially higher than the United States.

But you can't be comparing those two countries because China is a developing country while the United States is a developed country.

But some independent research shows that the real GDP growth in China is anything between 2.5 to 3%.

If this is the reality, then 2% for the United States is actually great.

The US labor market has been slowing down substantially since the beginning of 2025.

Now, between 2023 and 2024, the United States was adding hundreds of thousands of jobs every single month.

But suddenly beginning 2025, that number substantially goes down.

And by the end of the year, the United states only added 50,000 jobs, which is a fraction of the number of jobs that that it used to add back in 2023 and 2024.

However, unemployment did not increase much.

The year ended with unemployment rate of 4.4%.

While this number is significantly higher than it has been back in 2023 and 2024, 4.4% is actually great, especially if you compare it to many other European countries.

In some countries right now, unemployment is more than 7%.

And I'm not just talking about some poor countries that are struggling economically, but

G7 economies that are some of the largest economies out there.

The United States ended last year with 2.9% inflation rate.

And based on this trajectory, it was clear that the United States is going to achieve an inflation target of 2%.

That is the objective that the Federal Reserve has in front of itself.

But the moment Donald Trump introduces his tariffs back in April, you can see exactly what is happening.

Inflation rate skyrockets to 3% and then it cools down by the end of the year to 2.7%.

So inflation is still higher than the targeted inflation by the Federal Reserve, but 2.7% isn't substantially higher.

Yes, it is actually making investors nervous.

But 2.7% is not catastrophic given the fact that the GDP or the real GDP has grown by 2%.

Trump justified his tariffs because he wants to fix the trade balance with China, India and the European Union.

So did Trump actually fix the trade balance with these countries in 2025?

Before we answer that question, I want to share with you something that is very helpful if you are serious about investing in 2026.

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So did Trump's tariffs actually reduce the trade balance?

Back in 2023 and 2024, the United States was importing roughly about 60 to 80 billion dollars worth of products every single month.

By the end of the year, that number dropped to about $30 billion.

So essentially he reduced the imports by about 50%.

Yes, there was a spike in the beginning because all of these companies was rushing to bring all of those goods back to the United States to ensure that shelves in the stores are not going to be empty.

But right after that, they stopped importing.

And if this trajectory is going to continue throughout 2026, most likely he's going to fix the trade balance.

In fact, if you look at the numbers specifically with China, the trade balance back in January of 2025 was negative $31.7 billion.

By October of the same year, it is about $15 billion.

In fact, the United States imported from China back in January $41.6 billion.

By the end of the year, that number drops to $23.8 billion.

But exports to China didn't actually change much.

Yes, when Trump introduced the tariffs, those exports dropped dramatically.

But by the end of the year, the number jumped back to about $9 billion.

So essentially, the US exports to China dropped by about 8 to 9%, while imports from China has dropped by 50%.

Total exports in 2024 were about $2 trillion and the United States recorded a deficit of $1.3 trillion by 2025, total exports slightly grew and total imports slightly dropped.

And the United States recorded a deficit of less than a trillion dollars.

The reason that total imports in 2025 aren't that different from total imports in 2024 is because tariffs didn't actually instantly impact the market.

Companies imported way more to avoid the tariffs.

So the real implication of these tariffs actually happened by the end of the year, which most likely means that throughout 2026, we are going to see how imports are going to fall.

But the real question comes back at the end of the day.

Why did the GDP grow despite the tariffs?

A tariff generally increases the price because it is an extra tax on the goods that are imported from foreign countries.

So generally, higher prices drive lower consumption, which in total should bring down to lower GDP growth.

But why did the GDP grew by 2.1% last year?

The reality is that a GDP is a combination of multiple factors.

This is what you spend when you go on groceries.

Investments are any type of investment made by anybody in the economy.

It could be you buying stocks, or it could be a business building another manufacturing plant in the United States.

Government is the biggest spender in the economy.

The US Government spends trillions of dollars annually, so nobody can outspend the U.S. government.

Exports is what you export and sell to other countries.

Imports is what other countries are selling inside your country.

Tariffs essentially decrease the imports and increase exports, which means that higher GDP growth.

But last year was also a great year for AI because the big tech has been spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build the entire AI industry across the United States, which was one of the major reasons why the stock market did so well last year.

And it was also one of the biggest drivers drivers of the GDP last year.

And companies also realized that there is no way around it.

So they started bringing manufacturing back to the United States.

These manufacturing plants might not be open yet, and

it will take companies a couple of years to build them in the US but since they're already spending and building these factories across the United States, it is driving the GDP growth.

But not everything is sunshine and rainbows.

The United States government is spending more than ever and the debt is getting entirely out of control.

In 2025, the total deficit was about $1.8 trillion and the national debt ballooned to $38.6 trillion, at least at the time that I am recording this video.

Right before Trump took office, the national debt was $36.1 trillion.

So throughout his presidency, over the last year alone, the national debt grew by $2.5 trillion.

And we already know the budget for 2026, the deficit this year is going to exponentially grow by extra $400 billion because the total deficit will cross $2.2 trillion.

And most likely the national debt will cross $41 trillion.

Maybe by the end of the year, it might even be $41.5 trillion.