Taipei, Taiwan - When U.S. President Donald Trump began his first term in 2017, he set out to implement the most hawkish economic policies towards China over decades.
During the first 100 days of his second term, Trump took Washington's confrontation with Beijing to a higher level, setting a firm protectionist trade agenda that led to a de facto trade embargo between the world's two largest economies.
U.S. tariffs on most Chinese goods have risen to 145%, interest rates on certain items have risen to 245%, while loopholes that have previously allowed Chinese exporters to evade pre-existing tariffs have been closed.
In addition to other retaliatory measures (such as export controls on key minerals) and tighter restrictions on the number of Hollywood movies displayed in Chinese cinemas, China imposes a 125% tariff on most U.S. goods.
Trump's trade war begins where he left behind in his first administration, which is a long-standing belief that China and other countries have exploited trade relations with the United States.
Zhiwu Chen, a finance professor at the University of Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. trade deficit for goods and services reached $918.4 billion in 2024, with the commodity deficit reaching a record $1.2 trillion.
In Trump's worldview, China is Mexico and Canada's third largest trading partner after Mexico and Canada, and is one of the worst exploiters.
"Trump believes that in the era of globalization, China has gained free riding and leveraged American consumers," Dennis Wilder, a former White House official and senior researcher at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera in the U.S.-China dialogue initiative on global issues, he told Al Jazeera.
"He wants to balance trade and create good jobs for Americans, and he will seek investments in China to create good blue-collar jobs in the United States. He hopes that American companies have more sales capabilities in China."
Trump launched his first trade war with China in 2018 in response to his claims of unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft by Chinese companies.
Over the next two years, his administration imposed tariffs on $30 billion in Chinese goods, most of which remained in five years.
During his re-election campaign last year, Trump made it clear that he would hit China with steeper tariffs if he returned to the White House.
Jeffrey Moon said that while Trump’s anti-China trade posture since January is no surprise, the scope of his tariffs and the nature of his unstable range shocked observers.
“Trump was surprised that he was elected in 2016 and was not ready to take office. However, in 2025, the 2025 project gave him a detailed script that included mutual tariffs, which he began to execute in his inaugural speech.
Wild said most of Trump's original tariffs were positioned, even expanded by former U.S. President Joe Biden, but the Biden administration portrays the U.S.-China competition as a place where the ideological struggle between democracy and authoritarianism is motivated by a set of values.
"As it's obvious in the second semester, Trump is the president of geo-economics, not geo-strategy," he said.
"Trump will not seek the demise of President Xi Jinping, nor will he seek to combine with the Chinese economy unless China is unwilling to give the U.S. deals he believes are fairer in terms of economic relations," Wilder added.
In recent weeks, Trump and White House officials have publicly stated that they want to negotiate with China and reduce tariffs by 145%, which U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it "unsustainable."
Trump said his administration is in active negotiations on trade with Beijing. Chinese officials insist that any such negotiations have not yet begun.
Focusing on the U.S. - Ray Wang, a Washington analyst with China Economics, said Trump's strategy to maximize pressure on China could backfire and push Beijing toward further "decoupling" from the U.S. economy.
"In the face of embargo-level tariffs and aggravated hawkish rhetoric, Beijing is unlikely to engage in meaningful negotiations, complicating efforts to address the very economic concerns that the policy is designed to address," Wang told Al Jazeera.
Marina Zhang, associate professor at the University of Sydney Australia-China Relations Institute, said Chinese manufacturers may increasingly want other countries to break away from the U.S. economy.
Zhang told Al Jazeera: "For China, this brings both risks and opportunities: While its exporters to the United States are all under direct pressure, Beijing has exerted a wider push to market diversification - to ASEAN, Africa and Latin America - gained new urgency and traction."
With the U.S.-China trade war labor, Trump also turned his attention to U.S. trade with other countries.
Over the past 100 days, Trump has attacked Mexico and Canada with a separate round of inappropriate tariffs.
On April 2, he announced that the so-called "mutual tariffs" were between 10% and 49%, expanding the trade war to more than 180 countries and territories.
Trump then suspended tariffs for 90 days in expected national negotiations, but he continued to push China's trading partners to bridge limited U.S. export loopholes.
"The difference (from his first term) is that Trump's China strategy is part of the global economic strategy. For example, when he cuts new trade deals with Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc., he will want to make sure they don't help China avoid fairness in China's Jewish trade," said Wilder, a former official White House.
Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said Trump’s ultimate goal is to rewrite the long-standing “Washington Consensus” to support free trade and market liberalization in order to form its image.
"The Trump administration is changing the nature of its economic and security partnership and essentially changing its relationship with the world as a whole. This is not specifically targeted at China," Thompson told Al Jazeera.
“It’s really about Trump’s perception that the United States has been exploited and has not benefited from globalization, frankly reflecting what American voters think about the same thing.”