The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services narrowed more than 10 percent from August to September, as the Trump administration’s tariffs continued to weigh on trade, data from the Commerce Department showed on Thursday.

Imports grew just 0.6 percent from August to $342.1 billion, while exports rose 3 percent in the month, to $289.3 billion. Because exports grew more than imports, the U.S. trade deficit shrank, in line with the Trump administration’s goals.

At $52.8 billion, the trade deficit in goods and services hit its lowest level in September since June 2020, when the United States was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trade experts have cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from a few months of data and said that trade patterns have recently been distorted by businesses’ efforts to avoid paying tariffs.

Economists have also questioned the president’s focus on the trade deficit more broadly. Though President Trump has long seen the trade deficit as a sign of economic weakness, many economists have criticized his views on the measure as simplistic or wrong.

The sweeping tariffs Mr. Trump has imposed on imports from countries around the world this year, including on cars, metals and furniture, have led to big swings in trade. Before tariffs went into effect, many American businesses brought in a surge of products, to avoid paying import taxes.

After Mr. Trump’s global tariffs went into effect on Aug. 7, imports sharply slowed, before recovering somewhat in September. On Aug. 29, the Trump administration also ended the “de minimis” exemption, which allowed foreign shipments valued at less than $800 to come into the United States tariff-free. Opponents criticized the rule as a loophole that penalized U.S. manufacturers in favor of foreign competitors.

Since the tariffs went into effect, company stockpiles have allowed some firms to delay importing products. The aggressive buying earlier this year has also meant that the U.S. trade deficit is up significantly in 2025 so far. For the year through September, the trade deficit in goods and services has widened more than 17 percent from the same period in 2024, the data, which is compiled by the Census Bureau, showed. Exports have risen 5.2 percent, while imports are up 7.7 percent for the time period.

It remains to be seen how much U.S. consumers and businesses will import in the months ahead, given the now-higher prices of foreign goods. As of November, the U.S. effective tariff rate had climbed to more than 16 percent, the highest level since 1935, according to the Budget Lab at Yale, making it significantly more expensive for importers to bring goods into the country.

Brad Setser, a trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the data showed “unambiguous weakness” in U.S. imports in September. “The question is how you want to interpret that,” he added. “Is this payback from the front running? Or are tariffs starting to have an impact?”

Mr. Setser said that it was too early to answer that question, but that global trade data suggested that U.S. imports could rise again in the next few months, fueled partly by the purchase of foreign computers and chips to build data centers.

Adding more uncertainty is the fact that tariffs could undergo significant changes in the weeks to come. The Supreme Court is set to rule soon on the legality of many of the tariffs Mr. Trump issued using a 1970s emergency law. Administration officials have said that if those tariffs were struck down, they would use other authorities to impose duties.

Mr. Trump and his advisers continue to praise the economic benefit of tariffs. At an event in Washington on Wednesday, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, said that blue-collar wages were increasing and that the U.S. trade deficit was “clearly going the direction we want it to go, and we expect it to go.”

But other economic data appears to show little evidence, at least so far, that tariffs are helping the U.S. manufacturing sector. While companies have promised the White House eye-popping amounts of investment, spending on the construction of American factories has continued to fall, and the country has shed manufacturing jobs in recent months.

Other trade trends also reflect the effects of the administration’s trade war. U.S. soybean exports fell sharply after China responded to Mr. Trump’s tariffs by imposing levies of its own on American agriculture. In the year through September, U.S. exports of soybeans fell to $16.8 billion from $19.2 billion in the same period last year.

U.S. automotive imports and exports have also been weak this year, because of U.S. tariffs on foreign cars and stiff competition internationally from inexpensive Chinese-made vehicles. But U.S. exports of natural gas, corn, computers and airplanes have risen.

Some of the month-to-month changes in trade have been driven by companies stockpiling pharmaceuticals, and investors buying and selling gold, in part to offset uncertainty related to the tariffs.

Changes in the gold trade helped the United States rack up a $6.6 billion trade surplus with Switzerland in September, up from a slight deficit the previous month. The U.S. trade deficit with Ireland, a major producer of pharmaceuticals, also boomed in September, growing $15.3 billion to $18.2 billion.

At the same time, U.S. trade with China has slowed. In September, the trade deficit with China narrowed by $4 billion to $11.4 billion. For the year so far, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $160.5 billion, compared with trade deficits of $183 billion for the European Union, $146 billion for Mexico and $38 billion for Canada.

Amid tariffs and trade tensions, the overall share of U.S. imports from China has fallen to levels seen when China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001.

But while its exports to the United States have fallen, China’s overall exports to the rest of the world have continued to grow, as its factories pump out cheap cars, electronics and other products. China’s trade surplus with the world, or the volume of what it exports minus what it imports, has already surged past $1 trillion this year, setting a new record.

The trend has sparked concerns that Chinese exports are putting industries in other countries out of business, and that Chinese products are merely being routed, either legally or illegally, through other countries, including Vietnam and Mexico, and into the United States,. On Thursday, Mexico’s Congress approved tariffs of up to 50 percent on Chinese products in an effort to block cheap Chinese goods and align Mexican policy with that of the United States.

Mr. Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations said that declining U.S. imports from China had generally been offset by rising imports from elsewhere in Asia. If the United States was resetting its trade relationship anywhere, he argued, it was with close allies like Canada and the European Union, which have been exporting less to the United States because of tariffs.

“I see more evidence of sustained possible adjustment vis-a-vis Canada and Europe than with Asia as a whole,” he said.