Oregon exports declined by $5.9 billion in 2025, a massive 17% drop amid the global upheaval triggered by President Donald Trump’s trade war.
Tariffs are just part of the story, though. Damon Runberg, economist with the state economic development agency Business Oregon, says the decline also reflects cyclical trends in the semiconductor industry and broader weakness among the state’s businesses.
“The trade war had an impact on Oregon exporters and businesses,” Runberg said, “and also it’s pretty clear that the last year or two have been pretty soft for Oregon’s economy.”
The Trump administration hopes tariffs will eventually bring more manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. That hasn’t happened yet, though, as other countries establish their own trade barriers that raise the costs of American-made products. The fight has undercut domestic manufacturing, at least in the short run.
The Supreme Court ruled last month that many of the president’s tariffs were illegal in a case where Oregon served as lead plaintiff. The court found that the U.S. Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to levy tariffs and other taxes. The ruling added more uncertainty to the economic landscape, as Trump has moved to use other mechanisms to levy new tariffs.
Oregon is among the most trade-dependent states in the nation, selling computer chips, grains, fruits, wine, timber and many other products to customers all over the world. So when the president launched his trade war last year, Oregon leaders were watching nervously to see how Trump’s scattershot and fluctuating levies — and retaliatory measures from other countries — would affect the state.
“From the beginning there was a concern that Oregon was going to be more susceptible to tariffs, just based on the level of our economy that’s tied to trade,” Runberg said.
Electronics are Oregon’s most valuable product by far, accounting for more than $14 billion in exports last year — about half of all the state’s exports. They also represented two-thirds of last year’s decline in total Oregon exports, coinciding with a historic drop in factory jobs.
Intel is the state’s largest corporate employer, manufacturing billions of dollars in computer chips every year in its Hillsboro factories and sending them to facilities overseas for assembly and testing.
Its sales fell sharply in 2022 and 2023 as Intel fell behind the chip industry’s leading edge. The company has eliminated 6,000 Oregon jobs since the summer of 2024.
That could be contributing to the decline in the state’s exports, but Intel’s annual sales were flat last year. Last year’s layoffs didn’t start until July and continued through the end of the year — too late to have a meaningful impact on annual exports.
Intel doesn’t comment on the specifics of its Oregon output. But during 2025 the company was in the process of transitioning from an older manufacturing process to a new generation, called 18A, which was developed in Hillsboro and began mass production at the very end of last year.
It could be that exports fell last year as Intel eased off on making older products in Hillsboro, home to the company’s most advanced factories, before ramping up production on its 18A chips. Runberg said such “industry cycles” explain much of Oregon’s decline in exports last year.
Many other Oregon exports fell off last year, too. Sales of wood products, vegetables, metals, fruit and prepared vegetables were all down significantly in 2025. Runberg said some of those declines may reflect market conditions for specific products, but others could be the result of new tariffs on U.S. goods.
“We don’t know to what extent the trade war was an impact on any of those individual (categories),” he said, “but it clearly was an impact.”
Those losses were partially offset by gains in a few categories including edible fruits, nuts and cereals, such as wheat and barley. And Runberg noted that Oregon imports were up 9% last year, growing twice as fast as the national rate.
Many of those imports took place early in the year, when businesses were racing to stockpile products and supplies before Trump’s tariffs took effect. But Runberg said the fact that Oregon companies were investing last year implies a degree of long-term confidence in their future.
“To me,” he said, “that says that business is planning to do something with those imports, turn them into something else.”
This is Oregon Insight, The Oregonian’s weekly look at the numbers behind the state’s economy. View past installments here.