‘We cut it in half?!’CNBC’s Rick Santelli floored by how much trade deficit was slashed in wake of Trump’s tariffs

CNBC’s Rick Santelli appeared stunned Friday when he read the latest trade deficit numbers live during “Squawk Box,” with the figure coming in much lower than estimated and figures for the previous two months.

The March 2025 trade deficit came in at $140.5 billion, up from $123.2 billion in February, the two months before President Donald Trump made his April 2 announcement of reciprocal tariffs, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Santelli was looking over the report on the balance of trade on goods when he saw the figures for April and expressed his astonishment on live TV.

“Last number, of course a very important number to this administration, this is the trade balance, which is a deficit, expecting -$143 billion,” Santelli said. “Wow! It comes in much, much smaller, minus-87 billion and now this follows, this follows, a 163 that gets converted to 162 billion with a minus sign, the worst since record-keeping 1989, then we cut it in half to 87.6?”

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“87.6 would be the lightest, I’d have to really go back, 87.6 would be the lightest since… wow! September of `23, and this really does underscore how the movement of goods and services has really changed due to a variety of tariff-related issues,” Santelli continued.

President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs via an April 9 post on Truth Social that also announced substantial increases on tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States, a week after he initially unveiled the duties on imports. Trump later announced a reduction on tariffs on Chinese goods after negotiations in Geneva led by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, and a pause on tariffs imposed on the European Union until July 9,

The United States Court of International Trade (CIT) issued a ruling blocking some of Trump’s tariffs, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a stay on the ruling Thursday. Trump campaigned on imposing tariffs to help boost manufacturing in the United States and to reduce the trade deficit.

Bessent told Fox News host Sean Hannity on May 1 that the Trump administration was negotiating trade deals with 17 major trading partners of the United States.

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