Taiwanese President Donald Trump began his first term in office in 2017 by launching the most hawkish economic policy he has ever had.
Trump has a staunchly protectionist trade agenda that has resulted in a de facto trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies in the first 100 days of his second term, raising the stakes even higher for Beijing.
Most of the country’s products are currently subject to US tariffs of 145 percent, while some of the rate is also rising to 245 percent, while existing barriers to Chinese exporters’ ability to avoid pre-existing tariffs have been closed.
In response, China has imposed 125 percent tariffs on the majority of US products, in addition to other retaliatory measures like tighter restrictions on the number of Hollywood movies shown in Chinese theaters and export controls on critical minerals.
Trump’s trade war picks up from where his first administration ended, inspired by a long-standing belief that China and other nations have profited from their trade with the US.
“It’s essentially a continuation in terms of objectives and direction, perhaps with more tenacity and determination. Zhiwu Chen, a professor of finance at the University of Hong Kong, claimed on Al Jazeera that he has been treating China as an adversary rather than a friend.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US trade deficit for goods and services totaled $ 918.4 billion in 2024, with a record $1.2 trillion deficit for goods.
In Trump’s worldview, China ranks third behind Mexico and Canada in terms of trade, making it the third-largest exporter.
Trump believes that China exploited the US consumer in the wake of globalization, according to Dennis Wilder, a former White House official and senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues.
He will seek Chinese investment in the US to create good blue-collar jobs and balance trade to provide good jobs for Americans. He wants US businesses to be able to sell in China much more readily.
Trump retaliated against Chinese companies’ “unfair trade practices” and intellectual property theft in his first trade war with China in 2018.
His administration imposed tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods over the course of two years, the majority of which are still in place five years later.
Trump made it clear that if he was to return to the White House, he would impose even higher tariffs on China during his campaign for re-election last year.
While Trump’s anti-China trade policy has come as no surprise since January, Jeffrey Moon, who was the country’s assistant US trade representative for China under former US President Barack Obama, said that observers have taken aback by the scope and erratic on-again, off-again nature of his tariffs.
Trump claimed that he was surprised and dissapointed when he won the election in 2016. According to Moon, who leads the consulting firm China Moon Strategies, a conservative US think tank, a political roadmap was created by the Heritage Foundation, which included reciprocal tariffs, which was delivered in 2025.
Former US President Joe Biden continued to impose most of Trump’s original tariffs, adding that while the Biden administration portrayed the US-China conflict as an ideological conflict between democracy and authoritarianism, Trump is driven by a different set of values, according to Wilder.
Trump is a geoeconomic, not a geostrategic president, he said, as has become clear in the second term.
Trump, in response to Chinese President Xi Jinping, said, “Trump does not seek the demise of President Xi or seeks decoupling from the Chinese economy unless China is unwilling to offer the US what he sees as a fairer deal in economic relations.”
Tariffs that are “unsustainable”
Trump and White House officials have made it clear in recent weeks that they want to negotiate with China and lower the 145% tariff, which US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described as “unsustainable.”
Trump has stated that his administration is negotiating with Beijing for trade. Any such discussions have not yet begun, according to Chinese officials.
According to Ray Wang, a Washington, DC-based analyst who studies US-China economic statecraft, Trump’s policy of maximizing pressure on China might have a negative impact and encourage Beijing to pursue further “decoupling” from the US economy.
Beijing’s embargo-level tariffs and more hawkish rhetoric make it unlikely to engage in meaningful negotiations, Wang said, putting the pressure on efforts to address the policy’s specific economic concerns.
Chinese manufacturers may increasingly look to other nations to protect themselves from the US economy, according to Marina Zhang, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney’s Australia-China Relations Institute.
Zhang told Al Jazeera, “China’s exporters to the US face immediate pressure, but Beijing’s wider push for market diversification – to ASEAN, Africa, and Latin America – gains new urgency and traction.”
Trump has also focused on US trade with other nations in general as the US-China trade war drags on.
Trump has placed separate rounds of on-again, off-again tariffs against Mexico and Canada over the course of the past 100 days.
With the announcement of so-called “reciprocal tariffs” of 10 to 49 percent, he started the trade war with more than 180 nations and territories on April 2.
Trump put the tariffs on hold for 90 days in advance of country-by-country negotiations, but he has continued to press China’s trading partners to close the export loopholes.
Trump’s China strategy fits into a global economic strategy, according to his first term. He will want to make sure that any new trade agreements with Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc. don’t undermine China’s efforts to achieve fairness in US-China trade, according to Wilder, a former White House official.
Trump’s ultimate goal, according to Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, is to rewrite the country’s long-standing “Washington consensus” to one that is inspired by him.
The Trump administration’s relationship with the world’s largest economy is changing, according to the report. Thompson told Al Jazeera, “That’s not specifically directed at China.”
