President Trump meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington on September 24. Few Americans will turn off football or interrupt other regularly scheduled programming to follow the proceedings. In fact, even foreign-policy geeks expect the meeting to be sort of a yawner.
But it’s a good opportunity to ask, are we still engaged in a trade war with China? After all, Trump risked a stock-market blowup in the spring of 2025 when he launched his “Liberation Day” tariffs, which Wall Street promptly dubbed “Obliteration Day,” because the stock market tanked. For a few weeks in the spring of 2025, the Trump tariffs on some Chinese imports went as high as 145%.
It’s a very different story now. Import taxes are substantially higher under Trump, with Americans paying the cost. But Trump is nowhere near the trade gunslinger he was at the start of his second term. China, for one, called his bluff and retaliated effectively. It restricted exports of certain semiconductor and rare-earth minerals, threatening U.S. auto, defense, and high-tech supply chains. China has a near monopoly on some of those products, making US dependence a major vulnerability.
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China also slashed purchases of US farm goods such as soybeans, pork, corn, and wheat, sourcing them from other countries. The two countries struck a trade truce last October, with Trump lowering tariffs on Chinese goods and China pledging to resume US food purchases. But Chinese purchases are picking up slowly. That’s now a political vulnerability for Trump among rural voters in farm country who thought Trump had their back.
Tariff rates show the extent of Trump’s backpedaling. The average tariff on Chinese imports soared from 11% to 48% during Trump’s first few months in office. It has now drifted back to about 22%—not as draconian as before, but double the rate Trump started with.