The Trump Administration’s Approach to Trade Abandons American Exporters

One of the Trump administration’s rationales for its trade strategy is that it will open markets for American exports. Yet the administration’s policies—which have gutted services that help exporters compete and have provoked retaliatory tariffs and boycotts of U.S. goods abroad—are doing the opposite. American exporters now face severe disadvantages in global markets, and forward-looking indicators suggest that exports will decline considerably in the coming months. Key agricultural exports to China are already down markedly from April 2024, while a leading index of new export orders across several industries has plummeted to a level not seen since 2009.

Trump administration trade policy damages exporters

The Trump administration’s trade policy has harmed small businesses, which make up more than 97 percent of U.S. exporting firms. Increasing and highly variable input costs, as well as higher borrowing costs, no doubt are contributing to an increase in small-business bankruptcies. But the impact on exporters, which account for more than 10 million American jobs, may be even worse. Retaliatory measures that foreign governments have taken in response to the Trump administration’s tariffs, as well as a foreign consumer backlash against purchasing goods identified as symbols of the United States, have amplified the other challenges already facing U.S. businesses across different sectors of the economy.

Thus far, an increase in overall exports has obscured the impacts of the Trump administration’s trade and economic policies on exporters. In April 2025, U.S. exports increased by 9 percent year over year. But export statistics are a lagging indicator. More forward-looking indicators and industry projections paint a very different picture. For example, booking volumes of shipping containers for ocean-borne exports from U.S. harbors fell 30 percent in just two weeks in April following the president’s “liberation day” tariff announcement. Exports from the Port of Los Angeles, the largest port in the country, have declined every month since President Donald Trump took office. Deloitte now projects that U.S. exports will increase a mere 0.7 percent in 2025, down significantly from the 5 percent annual average increase seen over the previous four years.

According to the Institute of Supply Management’s (ISM) monthly report on manufacturing, which surveys manufacturing executives, new export orders in May fell to their lowest level since the Great Recession. The rate of decline of new export orders is particularly concerning, as is its broad impact across industries. According to the ISM’s index, new export orders have declined every month since President Trump took office, falling nearly 22 percent in just four months, the fastest drop since the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the 18 industries ISM surveyed in May, 15 reported a decline in new export orders.

Trump’s tariffs have raised the cost of importing essential materials and component parts that American exporters need to produce goods domestically for sale abroad. For example, Bivo, a Vermont-based small business that sells stainless steel water bottles, estimated a 30 percent reduction in sales from its previous estimates as a result of the Trump administration’s new tariffs on China. A Pennsylvania-based company that manufactures robotic systems for food packaging said it was struggling to remain competitive, as tariffs on robotics equipment from Europe have raised input costs and reduced demand, forcing the owner to delay business investments.

What’s behind the decline in U.S. export competitiveness?

The decline in U.S. export competitiveness is likely driven by several factors, all of them related to the Trump administration’s reckless trade and economic policies:

• Retaliatory tariffs are making it harder for U.S. exporters to compete. U.S. exporters are already confronting retaliatory tariffs in several markets, including China, Canada, and the European Union. Mexico and the EU have readied additional retaliatory measures, in the event that the Trump administration maintains its 50 percent tariff on steel and aluminum or reinstates the “reciprocal” tariffs it announced in early April but paused soon thereafter.

Agricultural, aerospace, and semiconductor companies have already proved particularly vulnerable to China’s retaliatory tariffs. According to a March analysis by The New York Times, smaller manufacturing communities in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and elsewhere stand to be particularly hard hit by the retaliatory actions of foreign governments.

• Foreign consumers are boycotting goods associated with the United States. U.S. exporters face a foreign consumer backlash against products or companies associated with the United States. Eighty-five percent of Canadians who responded to a recent poll reported replacing U.S. products with non-U.S. alternatives or planning to do so. Already, U.S. exports to Canada were down more than 11 percent in April 2025 compared with April 2024.

In France, a recent survey found that 32 percent of consumers were already boycotting American brands, with nearly twice that amount considering boycotts. Seventy percent of Swedes polled in March said they had refrained or were considering refraining from “buying American products as a form of political protest.” The New York Times reported that “in a Swedish Facebook group with over 80,000 members, users ask for tips on buying non-American laptops, dog food and toothpaste.” In Germany, 64 percent of respondents to one poll said they “prefer to avoid US products, if possible.” It is not inconceivable that exports to these European countries, which saw tariff threats several weeks after those made against Canada, will soon follow a pattern of decline similar to Canada’s.

American farmers have certainly felt the impact of the Trump administration’s trade wars in the form of lost export sales. U.S. exports of wheat and soybeans to China, for example, have declined 11 percent and 25 percent, respectively, since April 2024.* In the case of soybeans, the loss of the Chinese market is particularly damaging, as China accounted for more than half of all U.S. exports in the sector. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is now projecting an overall decline in total American agricultural exports in 2025, with exports falling to a level not seen since the pandemic.

The Chinese government has even involved itself in helping Chinese buyers backfill orders that would have gone to American suppliers. President Xi Jinping hosted a summit of Latin American leaders, helping Brazilian farmers, for example, find new buyers for their products. Even American beef, once a staple in high-end Chinese restaurants, has been replaced by beef produced in Australia.

• The Trump administration has gutted the programs that help U.S. exporters compete. The loss of potential export markets for U.S. producers is made worse by the Trump administration’s gutting of the federal agencies designed to help exporters compete abroad. The Minority Business Development Agency has been essentially shuttered. The Small Business Administration has announced plans to slash its workforce by more than 40 percent. And the International Trade Administration is facing an unprecedented budget cut, as the administration seeks to refocus the agency away from supporting exporters and toward trade enforcement and investment attraction.

Conclusion

The Trump administration’s abandonment of U.S. exporters is particularly shortsighted, given that companies that export tend to pay their employees better wages and are more resilient in the face of economic downturns. Manufacturing jobs are particularly reliant on exports, with nearly 45 percent of U.S. manufacturing output exported every year. And while larger multinational firms can largely navigate global markets on their own, smaller firms often need help identifying potential foreign buyers, financing their export sales, and resolving trade disputes—functions that the agencies slashed by the Trump administration provided. The resulting challenges are yet another sad result of the administration’s disastrous trade and economic policies.

* Author’s calculations using Bureau of Economic Analysis data on “U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, April 2025,” to determine export growth and decline of goods between April 2024 and April 2025.