Nigeria’s exports to the United States fell by N940.98bn in the first nine months of 2025, even as imports from America more than doubled, reversing the trade balance that favoured Nigeria a year earlier, findings from the National Bureau of Statistics’ foreign trade data have shown.
An analysis of the NBS figures for Q1–Q3 2024 and Q1–Q3 2025 showed that Nigeria exported goods worth N3.65tn to the US in the first nine months of 2025, down from N4.59tn recorded in the corresponding period of 2024, representing a decline of 20.5 per cent or N940.98bn.
Over the same nine-month period, Nigeria’s imports from the US rose sharply to N6.80tn from N3.01tn, an increase of 125.5 per cent or N3.78tn, indicating that Nigeria bought far more from the US than it sold to the market in 2025.
This left Nigeria with a trade deficit of about N3.15tn with the United States in the first nine months of 2025, compared with a trade surplus of N1.57tn in the corresponding period of 2024.
The deterioration coincided with Washington’s implementation of its “reciprocal” tariff regime, under which Donald Trump signed an executive order raising Nigeria’s tariff rate from 14 per cent to 15 per cent.
The order, issued late July, took effect on August 7, 2025. Although crude oil has been exempted in several cases, the higher duty applies directly to a wide range of non-oil Nigerian exports, creating uncertainty for American importers and dampening demand ahead of and after the effective date.
