U.S. Tariffs No Impact on China — It Scores Record Trade Surplus

U.S. Tariffs No Impact on China — It Scores Record Trade Surplus

The numbers coming out of China show that President Donald Trump’s tariff strategy has been a bust when looking at its impact on China.

The Wall Street Journal reports, “When President Trump returned to the White House last year, economists predicted new tariffs would stifle China’s massive export machine.”

“Instead, China’s trade surplus, the difference between its exports and imports, reached a record in 2025 at $1.19 trillion. Exports jumped 5.5% last year from 2024 in dollar-denominated terms, compared with 5.9% growth the prior year, China’s customs agency reported Wednesday,” added the WSJ.

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The New York Times reports, “China’s trade surplus has also been propelled by a weak currency, which makes the country’s goods less expensive in foreign markets and its imports more expensive. The government allowed the currency, the renminbi, to weaken considerably during the Covid-19 pandemic and has barely allowed it to recover since, although there has been a slight rebound in recent weeks.”

In April of 2025, when Trump announced his tariff strategy, one of the promised outcomes was a more balanced trade with China.

“Shipments to the U.S. fell, but Chinese manufacturers found new customers in the rest of the world. The global economy, powered by AI spending, kept chugging along, keeping external demand strong. And another year of producer-price deflation made Chinese goods attractive to overseas buyers. 

The result: Strong exports helped power China’s economy to expectation-defying growth last year, even as the property market and consumer sentiment in the country remained in the doldrums,” adds the WSJ.