Bilateral Trade At Risk

The warning is that trade restrictions are no longer hitting one product at a time; they are now threatening hundreds of billions of dollars in cross-border business tied to China. (cfr.org) The United States and China still traded $414.7 billion in goods in 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, even after years of tariffs and export controls. U.S. exports to China totaled $106.3 billion last year, while imports from China were $308.4 billion. (census.gov) That remaining trade is concentrated in sectors governments now treat as strategic: semiconductors, batteries, industrial machinery, and minerals used in magnets, radar, lasers, and electric motors. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative says Section 301 tariffs and product-specific exclusions tied to China are still in force through at least November 10, 2026. (ustr.gov) China has also widened its use of export controls. A Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis published April 14, 2025 said Beijing’s latest rare-earth restrictions covered seven rare earth elements and required special export licenses for the minerals and magnets. (csis.org) Rare earths are a small-volume trade with outsized leverage because they sit deep inside finished products. Bloomberg reported on April 4, 2025 that China’s new curbs affected materials used in wind turbines, jet engine coatings, radar devices, communications gear, and other advanced technologies. (bloomberg.com) The risk to bilateral trade is not limited to direct shipments between the United States and China. International Monetary Fund researchers wrote in June 2025 that rising barriers are rerouting trade through “connector countries,” rather than cleanly separating the two economies. (imf.org) That means a tariff or export ban can hit the same supply chain multiple times: once in the country that makes a component, again in the country that assembles it, and again in the market that buys the finished product. The International Monetary Fund said those reallocations can raise vulnerability to deeper fragmentation even when headline trade appears resilient. (imf.org) The broader backdrop is a trade relationship that never returned to pre-2018 normal. The Council on Foreign Relations said this month that tariffs first imposed in 2018 were largely kept in place, then steepened under President Donald Trump’s second term, while Beijing retaliated with levies and tighter controls on rare earths and other critical materials. (cfr.org) There is still no full decoupling. The same Council on Foreign Relations briefing says experts do not expect the world’s two largest economies to separate completely, but they do expect deeper disruption in supply chains, investment decisions, and the trading system. (cfr.org) So the $360 billion warning is less a forecast of one sudden collapse than a measure of how much commerce now sits inside the blast radius of policy. With tariffs, licensing rules, and retaliation all still active in April 2026, the next restriction can turn a political dispute into an accounting loss very quickly. (cfr.org)