BEIJING, CHINA – NOVEMBER 9: U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping arrive at … [+] a state dinner at the Great Hall of the People on November 9, 2017 in Beijing, China. Trump is on a 10-day trip to Asia. (Photo by Thomas Peter – Pool/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump pursued a protectionist trade policy during his first term as part of his “America first” agenda aimed at reducing the U.S. trade deficit, boosting domestic manufacturing and prioritizing American interests.
The Trump administration slapped tariffs on key imports from China, sparking a trade war with the country, and also invoked national security concerns to justify tariffs on steel and aluminum imports even from friendly trading partners like Canada, Mexico and the European Union. In his campaign to return to office, Trump has vowed in multiple speeches and interviews to bring in even tougher tariffs if he won a second term.
President Joe Biden’s stance is less overtly protectionist or punitive but — as Trump pointed out in the presidential debate September 10 against Vice President Kamala Harris — his administration has kept many of the Trump-era tariffs.
Both presidents have tried to strike a balance between supporting U.S. industries and addressing strategic competition with China. And both have sought to grow U.S. exports and reduce reliance on imports. Has either of them succeeded?
Data reported by the U.S. Bureau of Economic suggests mixed results. Overall trade increased during both the Trump and Biden administrations, albeit less so under Trump. U.S. total annual trade volumes increased just over 3% from 2016, the year Trump was elected, to 2020 when his term ended. It increased 33% from 2020, when Biden was elected, to 2023.
Analysis of U.S. trade data conducted by the Global Trade Algorithmic Intelligence Center (GTAIC) — a Lithuania-based machine-learning based platform capturing international trade data which launched earlier this year — suggests that Biden’s policies were more effective. U.S. total annual imports increased 12% under Trump as opposed to 32% under Biden. But at the same time, the US’s total annual exports grew by less than 4% between 2016 and 2020 while increasing 41% from 2020 to 2023. “This signals that despite the populist measures taken by the Trump administration to ‘make America great again’, these measures negatively impacted the international trade position of the U.S. in both exports and imports,” said Dzmitry Kolkin, chief economist at GTAIC.
For this analysis, GTAIC used original micro-data, such as non-aggregated data reported by individual countries. Data are not seasonally adjusted.
With U.S.-China trade relations being such a large focus of the 2024 presidential campaign, it is worth examining what the numbers reveal about this dynamic.
Annual total trade between the U.S. and China grew by roughly the same rates under both administrations: approximately 3% under Trump and 2.4% under Biden. Given all the measures imposed by the Trump administration to reduce imports from China, the amount actually grew by a negligible 0.5% during his time in office yet decreased by 2% during Biden’s.
Both presidents did manage to increase U.S. exports to China, but Biden had slightly more success. Total annual exports to China increased by nearly 14% under Trump and 19% under Biden. As for the annual balance of trade between the two countries, it remains tilted in China’s favor but the Biden administration managed to cut the trade deficit almost by 10% compared with a 4% reduction by Trump, according to GTAIC’s analysis.
The top three products that the US imports from China, according to GTAIC, are smartphones, portable automatic data processing machines (commonly known as laptops) and lithium-ion batteries. These three also account for about 20% of the U.S. imports from China, for a total of $448 billion in 2023.
Under the Trump administration imports of these three technology products from China grew substantially: lithium-ion batteries by 133%, laptops by 55% and smartphones by just under 14%. Under the Biden administration the increase in imports of lithium-ion batteries was even steeper (+530%), while laptop imports declined (-25%). Smartphone imports were similar to the trend under Trump (+16%).
The top three imported products by the U.S. from China accounted for around 20% of the total imports from that country in both the years of 2020 and 2023. “This shows the strong resilience of international supply chains despite the unfriendly trade policy of both countries towards each other,” Kolkin said.
