US January Budget Deficit Falls 26% to $95B

The U.S. government posted a $95 billion budget deficit in January, down $34 billion or 26% from a year earlier as revenue gains including customs duties outpaced growth in outlays, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.

Adjusting for routine calendar shifts in benefit payments due to holidays, weekends and other factors in both years, the Treasury said the January deficit would have been $30 billion, a decline of $52 billion or 63% from January 2025.

January receipts totaled $560 billion, up $47 billion or 9% from a year earlier, while outlays totaled $655 billion, up $13 billion or 2%.

Through the first four months of the 2026 fiscal year that started October 1, the deficit fell to $697 billion, down $143 billion or 17% from the same period of fiscal 2025.

Year-to-date receipts totaled $1.785 trillion, up $188 billion or 12% from the prior year period, while outlays reached $2.482 trillion, up $46 billion or 2%.

January receipts and outlays were records for the month, but the deficit was not a record, a Treasury official told reporters. Year-to-date receipts and outlays were also both records for the first four months of a fiscal year, but the deficit was not a record.

Helping to drive both January and year-to-date results were sharply higher net customs receipts due to President Donald Trump's tariffs.

These totaled $27.7 billion in January, about the same level as December and slightly below the $30 billion monthly pace late last year. Customs duties in January 2025, the month that Trump took office and well before his tariff announcements, totaled $7.3 billion.

Fiscal year-to-date net customs duties were $117.7 billion, up from $28.2 billion a year earlier.

Also cutting the deficit was a rare $12 billion decline in Treasury interest outlays on the public debt to $72 billion for January.

The Treasury official said this stemmed from downward adjustments to payments on inflation-linked securities that were delayed by last year's government shutdown and publication of consumer price index data.

Year-to-date Treasury debt interest totaled $426 billion, a record for the period, up $34 billion or 9%.