A full-scale trade war with China and the US is in prospect after President Donald Trump imposed tariffs of more than 100% on Chinese goods imports.
China has said it will “fight to the end” rather than capitulate to what it sees as US coercion, and will hike its own tariffs on American goods from 34% to 84% in response to the White House’s latest move.
What does this escalating trade conflict mean for the world economy?
How much trade do they do?
The trade in goods between the two economic powers added up to around $585bn (£429bn) last year.
Though the US imported far more from China ($440bn) than China imported from America ($145bn).
That left the US running a trade deficit with China – the difference between what it imports and exports – of $295bn in 2024. That’s a considerable trade deficit, equivalent to around 1% of the US economy.
But it’s less than the $1tn figure that Trump has repeatedly claimed this week.
Trump already imposed significant tariffs on China in his first term as president. Those tariffs were kept in place and added to by his successor Joe Biden.
Together those trade barriers helped to bring the goods the US imported from China down from a 21% share of America’s total imports in 2016 to 13% last year.
So the US reliance on China for trade has diminished over the past decade.
Yet analysts point out that some Chinese goods exports to the US have been re-routed through south-east Asian countries.
For example, the Trump administration imposed 30% tariffs on Chinese imported solar panels in 2018.
But the US Commerce Department presented evidence in 2023 that Chinese solar panel manufacturers had shifted their assembly operations to states such as Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and then sent the finished products to the US from those countries, effectively evading the tariffs.
The new “reciprocal” Trump tariffs imposed on those countries will therefore push up the US price of a wide range of goods ultimately originating in China.
What do the US and China import from each other?
In 2024, the biggest category of goods exports from the US to China were soybeans – primarily used to feed China’s estimated 440 million pigs.
The US also sent pharmaceuticals and petroleum to China.
Going the other way, from China to the US, were large volumes of electronics, computers and toys. A large amount of batteries, which are vital for electric vehicles, were also exported.
The biggest category of US imports from China is smartphones, accounting for 9% of the total. A large proportion of these smartphones are made in China for Apple, a US-based multinational.
The US tariffs on China have been one of the main contributors to the decline in the market value of Apple in recent weeks, with its share price falling by 20% over the past month.
