One year after the United States started its tariff war, on April 2, 2025, The trade deficit has skyrocketed in Spain by almost 42% in a context of rising uncertainty for companies and also for the Government, which has seen how external demand has slowed the country’s growth.
2025 will be remembered as the year of the trade war started by US President Donald Trump, twelve months in which the European Union (EU) and practically all countries in the world have been forced to redouble their negotiating efforts and seek new markets.
In Spain, the trade deficit increased that year by 41.6%, reaching 57,054 million euros, although the trend has changed at the beginning of this year, since in January it was reduced by 35.2% compared to the same month of the previous year, according to data from the latest published trade balance.
Exports of goods reached 387,092 million in 2025, 0.7% more than in 2024, and imports totaled 444,146 million, with an increase of 4.6%, while in the month of January foreign sales fell almost 2.9% and purchases sank more than 8%.
Exports to the US fall to double digits
In the case of the United States, sales have fallen significantly in the last ten months (with the exception of September), and especially in August, when they plummeted by more than 30%, so lExports to this country have gone from representing 4.3% of the total in January 2025 to 3.9% in January 2026.
That month, exports to the United States fell by 11.4%, to 1,140 million euros, while imports plummeted by almost 21%, and thanks to this the trade deficit between both countries has been cut by almost 29% (1,087.2 million euros).
Taking into account the data for the month of January, it is observed that sales to China have fallen by 7.8%, although in 2025 they increased by almost 7%, although sales to the Asian giant still do not have a very important weight and represent 2.1% of the total, with a negative deficit of more than 42,000 million euros.
Regarding the European Union (EU), where 64% of the total is exported, they have decreased by 2.5% in January and have increased by a slight 0.6% in 2025 as a whole, due to the fact that it is going through an economic period of marked atony and stagnation.
In fact, exports to Spain’s main trading partners fell in the case of Germany, 5.6% less, and Italy, 1.6% less; while they increased by 1.7% in the case of France and only 0.1% in Portugal (data corresponding to January).
External demand slows growth
These data translate into The foreign sector was a brake on the Spanish economy, since if it grew 2.8% in 2025, it did so thanks to greater household consumption and the increase in business investment (domestic demand) and despite external demand (exports and imports), which subtracted 0.7 points.
The National Institute of Statistics (INE) confirmed this last Thursday, although it detailed that exports closed the year as a whole positively, with an increase of 3.6%, which was 1.1% for exports of goods and 8.4% for exports of services.
This is because imports increased by 6.2%, compared to 2.9% a year earlier, in line with the strength of consumption and investment.
Message of tranquility from the Government
Just six days after the so-called Liberation Day, when Trump announced the tariffs, the Council of Ministers gave the green light to the “response and commercial relaunch plan” designed by the Executive to mitigate their impact and which was endowed with more than 14,000 million euros, of which at least 7,400 million are new financing.
The Minister of Economy, Commerce and Business, Carlos Body, explained that the objective of the plan is to convey a message “of trust” and of “a cool head when acting”, although he recognized that the relationship with the United States must be protected since it is the “most relevant” trading partner outside the European Union (EU).
In these twelve months the situation has not improved and in fact the American president has cut all commercial ties due to his position in relation to the offensive against Iran and even imposed a commercial embargo after the Government’s refusal to authorize the use of the Morón and Rota bases in military operations against Tehran.
Body has highlighted in recent days that despite everything, Spanish companies “operate today under the same conditions” as French, German or Italian companies, since “the commercial relationship is established at the level of the European Union.”
