Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed below belong solely to the author. Data comes from the latest government sources in Singapore and the USA.
The United States Census Bureau has updated its trade figures for June 2025, completing the data for the second quarter of 2025, showing a 18.69% for Singapore exports to the US since Donald Trump’s April tariff announcement.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s Department of Statistics is reporting an 18.9% drop in domestic exports to America (that is of goods made locally, excluding re-exports).
It’s a decline of S$3 billion and S$1.3 billion respectively compared to the same period in 2024 and the lowest reading since Q3 of 2019, six years ago.
At the same time, Singapore’s imports from the US also took a tumble, dropping by S$1.1 billion, offsetting the deficit slightly.
Nevertheless, a nearly S$2 billion net shortfall in total trade balance per quarter would amount to almost S$8 billion over the course of a year. With Singapore’s GDP standing at around S$750 billion in 2024 it would reduce it by a full 1 percentage point.
You can now understand how it may have contributed to the Ministry of Trade & Industry’s cut its original GDP growth forecast from 1 to 3%, to 0 to 2% for 2025, as soon as the tariffs were announced.
Fortunately, it’s not all bad news.
GDP receives a surprising statistical boost
MTI has just updated its GDP forecast again, to between 1.5 and 2.5%, following the first half of the year which recorded a solid growth of over 4%.
In terms of bilateral trade with America, the first quarter of the year was considerably better for Singapore than the second, which has balanced things out a bit.
This is despite limited evidence of the front-loading of imports by American buyers—that is purchasing more ahead of time, in anticipation of tariffs—unless it happened in January, which saw a significant 33% jump compared to 2024.
Perhaps some importers in America were spooked by Trump early enough to have bought way ahead of time as he was about to be sworn in at the beginning of the year, as subsequent months do not look significantly out of the norm.
As a result, Singapore sold nearly S$1.5 billion more to the US in the first three months of the year, while importing S$1.7 billion less than in 2024, leading to a substantial surplus of S$1.56 billion, which has only now been offset by the roughly S$2 billion deficit in Q2 (data from the US Census Bureau).
This means that at the mid-point of 2025, Singapore has recorded a trade deficit of S$423 million with the US, which was much better compared to S$1.85 billion last year.
Paradoxically, then, despite falling exports, the net impact of trade balance with the US on GDP is, so far, more positive than it was last year.
However, we should not dismiss the decline in trade with America casually, as a permanent drop in bilateral exchange is threatening billions of dollars in revenue that will not be easily replaced and almost certainly is going to have a negative impact on employment.
While the total volume of domestic exports (excluding re-exports) remains unaffected for the most part (it did record a slight dip only), we will have to wait for the new levies, agreed or imposed on countries around the world this August, to reshuffle the supply chains.
It remains to be seen if Singapore stands to gain from the relatively lower rate compared to its neighbours or, perhaps, is going to lose overall on lower international trade which traditionally uses the city-state as an logistical hub.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that Trump tariffs are already having an effect. Hopefully, the positives outweigh the negatives for Singapore.
- Read other articles we’ve written on Singapore’s current affairs here.
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