Taipei, Taiwan – When United States President Donald Trump started his first time period in 2017, he set about implementing probably the most hawkish financial coverage towards China in a long time.
Within the first 100 days of his second time period, Trump has taken Washington’s confrontation with Beijing to larger heights nonetheless, laying out a staunchly protectionist commerce agenda that has led to a de facto commerce embargo between the world’s two largest economies.
US tariffs on most Chinese language items have risen to 145 p.c, with the speed rising to 245 p.c on some objects, whereas loopholes that beforehand allowed Chinese language exporters to evade pre-existing tariffs have been closed.
China has imposed tariffs of 125 p.c on most US items in response, along with different retaliatory measures corresponding to export controls on vital minerals and tighter limits on the variety of Hollywood movies proven in Chinese language cinemas.
Trump’s commerce warfare picks up from the place he left off in his first administration, formed by a longstanding perception that China and different nations have taken benefit of their commerce relationship with the US.
“It’s roughly a continuation when it comes to targets and path, perhaps with extra drive, extra willpower. He has been treating China as an enemy and never as a pal,” Zhiwu Chen, a finance professor on the College of Hong Kong, advised Al Jazeera.
The US commerce deficit in items and companies reached $918.4bn in 2024, with the deficit in items hitting a document $1.2 trillion, based on the Bureau of Financial Evaluation.
In Trump’s worldview, China, the US’s third-largest commerce associate after Mexico and Canada, is among the many worst exploiters.
“Trump believes that China has gotten a free trip throughout the period of globalisation and exploited the US shopper,” Dennis Wilder, a former White Home official and senior fellow at Georgetown College’s Initiative for US-China Dialogue on International Points, advised Al Jazeera.
“He needs to stability commerce to create good jobs for People, and he’ll search Chinese language funding within the US to create good blue-collar jobs. He needs US companies to have way more skill to promote in China.”
Trump launched his first commerce warfare with China in 2018 in response to what he claimed had been unfair commerce practices and mental property theft by Chinese language companies.
Over the subsequent two years, his administration imposed tariffs on $300bn of Chinese language items, most of which stay in place 5 years on.
Whereas campaigning for re-election final 12 months, Trump made clear that he would hit China with even steeper tariffs if returned to the White Home.
Whereas Trump’s anti-China commerce posture since January has come as no shock, the scope and erratic on-again, off-again nature of his tariffs have taken observers aback, stated Jeffrey Moon, who served because the assistant US commerce consultant for China underneath former US President Barack Obama.
“Trump was shocked that he was elected in 2016 and was not ready to take workplace. In 2025, nevertheless, Mission 2025 gave him an in depth playbook that included reciprocal tariffs and that he started executing in his inaugural deal with,” Moon, who heads the consultancy China Moon Methods, advised Al Jazeera, referring to a political roadmap drafted by the Heritage Basis, a conservative US assume tank.
Most of Trump’s authentic tariffs had been stored in place and even expanded on by former US President Joe Biden, however the place the Biden administration painted US-China competitors as an ideological battle between democracy and authoritarianism, Trump is motivated by a unique set of values, Wilder stated.
“As has change into apparent within the second time period, Trump is a geoeconomic, not a geostrategic president,” he stated.
“Trump doesn’t search the demise of President Xi or search to decouple from the Chinese language economic system except China is unwilling to present the US what he considers a fairer deal in financial relations,” Wilder added, referring to Chinese language President Xi Jinping.
‘Unsustainable’ tariffs
In latest weeks, Trump and White Home officers have overtly stated they wish to negotiate with China and decrease the 145 p.c tariff charge, which US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has referred to as “unsustainable”.
Trump has stated his administration is in lively negotiations with Beijing on commerce. Chinese language officers have insisted that any such talks have but to start.
Ray Wang, a Washington, DC-based analyst who focuses on US-China financial statecraft, stated Trump’s technique of maximising strain on China may backfire and push Beijing in the direction of additional “decoupling” from the US economic system.
“Dealing with embargo-level tariffs and intensifying hawkish rhetoric, Beijing is unlikely to interact in significant negotiations, thereby complicating efforts to handle the very financial issues the coverage goals to resolve,” Wang advised Al Jazeera.
Marina Zhang, an affiliate professor on the Australia-China Relations Institute, College of Expertise Sydney, stated Chinese language producers might more and more look to different nations to insulate themselves from the US economic system.
“For China, this presents each dangers and alternatives: whereas its exporters to the US face instant strain, Beijing’s broader push for market diversification – to ASEAN, Africa, and Latin America – good points new urgency and traction,” Zhang advised Al Jazeera.
Because the US-China commerce warfare lumbers on, Trump has additionally set his sights on US commerce with different nations usually.
Over the previous 100 days, Trump has hit Mexico and Canada with separate rounds of on-again, off-again tariffs.
On April 2, he expanded the commerce warfare to greater than 180 nations and territories with the announcement of so-called “reciprocal tariffs” of between 10 and 49 p.c.
Trump subsequently paused the tariffs for 90 days in anticipation of country-by-country negotiations, however he has continued to push China’s buying and selling companions to shut loopholes for US-bound exports.
“The distinction [from his first term] is that Trump’s China technique is a part of a worldwide financial technique. For instance, as he cuts new commerce offers with Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and so forth, he’ll wish to make it possible for they don’t seem to be serving to China sidestep equity in US-China commerce,” stated Wilder, the previous White Home official.
Drew Thompson, a senior fellow on the S Rajaratnam College of Worldwide Research in Singapore, stated Trump’s finish aim is to rewrite the longstanding “Washington consensus” supporting free commerce and market liberalisation to at least one formed in his picture.
“The Trump administration is altering the character of its financial and safety partnerships and basically its relationship with your complete world. That’s not directed particularly at China,” Thompson advised Al Jazeera.
“That is actually about Trump’s notion that the US has been taken benefit of and hasn’t benefitted from globalisation, and, frankly, reflecting the American voters’ notion of the identical factor.”
