Bitcoin trading remained volatile on Thursday, rising to around $67,000 after briefly falling to near $65,900, as traders weighed a new message from U.S. President Donald Trump saying the country’s trade deficit had been reduced by 78% thanks to tariffs and could turn positive later this year.
“The U.S. trade deficit has been reduced by 78% thanks to tariffs on other companies and other countries,” Trump said in a Truth Social article Wednesday evening. “It will enter positive territory during this year, for the first time in many decades.”
The claim is less important to crypto because of the calculations contained in a single article and more because it returns the market to a familiar pressure point.
Tariffs can act as a tax on imports, which can raise prices in the real economy and make it more difficult for interest rates to move. When markets start to lock in “higher rates for longer,” the dollar tends to strengthen and risk assets tend to lose oxygen.
Bitcoin has spent the past two weeks trading as a macro proxy again, reacting to liquidity changes and rate expectations rather than any crypto-specific catalysts.
There is also a real data context that makes commerce a hot topic. In early January, the U.S. trade deficit narrowed sharply to around $29.4 billion, the lowest since 2009, with analysts pointing to falling imports, rising exports and the fallout from tariff threats.
But economists also noted that much of this variation came from non-monetary gold flows, which can make the monthly numbers appear sharper than the underlying trend.
If the tariff story hardens and results in a stronger dollar and tighter financial conditions, the recovery may struggle to endure. If it fades into the political noise, crypto comes down to monitoring flows, leverage and whether buyers can recover lost levels.
