INVESTIGATION: Trump's trade war — who pays, who profits, and why Beijing wins

Introduction: The paradox no one wanted to see

A trade war with an unexpected loser

Since January 2025, Washington has launched the largest tariff offensive since the 1930s. Customs duties of 145% on Chinese goods, taxes ranging from 10% to 50% on dozens of trade partners, investigations launched under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, an import tax regime that the U.S. Supreme Court itself ruled partially illegal in February 2026 — President Trump bet everything on tariff pressure as the ultimate geopolitical weapon. The stated intention: force China to fold, bring factories back to American soil, and rebalance astronomical trade deficits.

The actual result — documented figure by figure — is radically different. China posted a record trade surplus of $1.19 trillion in 2025 — the first country in modern history to cross the trillion-dollar threshold — according to Chinese customs data cited by The Guardian on January 14, 2026. American consumers, meanwhile, are paying on average more than $2,500 extra per household in 2026 in tariff costs, according to the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee. The paradox is cruel: the strategy designed to weaken Beijing has, in practice, forced it to reinvent itself — and that reinvention is working in its favor.

The central question of this investigation

Who is actually paying for Trump's trade war? Who is profiting from it? And why is China — the supposed number-one target of this strategy — coming out better than expected, while Western allies and American households absorb most of the blows? This investigation draws on verified data, primary sources, and independent research to answer these questions without complacency and without naivety.

What we are about to demonstrate is uncomfortable for all sides: neither the right wing celebrating Trump's toughness on Beijing, nor the left fantasizing about free trade as a panacea, emerges unscathed from this examination. The reality is darker, more complex, and above all more urgent than the slogans suggest.

The Supreme Court blows the whistle: IEEPA tariffs struck down

A historic legal rebuke

On February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 6-to-3 ruling: President Trump had exceeded his authority by imposing global tariffs through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the IEEPA. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote without ambiguity: "The IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs." In doing so, the Court erased with a single stroke the "Liberation Day" tariffs of April 2025, the reciprocal tariffs against dozens of nations, and certain measures specifically targeting China, Canada, and Mexico. According to Foreign Policy, the ruling implies that the Trump administration had illegally collected up to $175 billion in taxes from American taxpayers over the preceding twelve months.

Trump's response was immediate and revealing of his state of mind: that same day, he announced a new global tariff of 10%, this time invoking Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — a provision never previously used in American history. This section authorizes the president to impose tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days to address a balance-of-payments deficit, after which congressional approval is required. The following day, Trump announced an increase to 15%. According to Axios, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent estimated that this combination of measures would keep tariff revenues "roughly unchanged" in 2026.

Legality challenged on every front

But Foreign Policy published a scathing analysis as early as February 26, 2026: these new tariffs under Section 122 are, according to the legal experts cited, just as illegal as their predecessors. Section 122 only authorizes tariffs in response to a serious balance-of-payments imbalance or imminent dollar depreciation — conditions that no one in the administration itself was able to clearly define during hearings before the U.S. Court of International Trade in April 2026. Meanwhile, Section 301 investigations advance, building a new legal framework for more durable tariffs. Section 122 expires July 24, 2026 — and the tariff architecture for the next phase is being built behind the scenes.

This legal ballet is not a procedural footnote. It reveals a fundamental truth: Trump's tariff policy is improvised, legally unstable, and generates massive uncertainty for businesses that must plan their supply chains over multi-year horizons. It is not China that pays the most immediate price — it is American importers and, down the chain, consumers.

Who pays the tariffs? Americans — at 90%

The myth of the bill sent to Beijing

Trump has repeatedly insisted that it is exporting countries — notably China — that pay American tariffs. This is economically false, and the data prove it. On February 12, 2026, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a thorough study on the full-year 2025 tariff impact: 90% of tariff costs are absorbed by American consumers and businesses, with foreign exporters bearing only a marginal fraction. According to the same study, between January and August 2025, Americans absorbed 94% of the impact — a figure that declined only slightly to 86% by November, as cited by Reuters.

The Congressional Budget Office confirms: foreign exporters bear roughly 5% of tariff costs. American businesses absorb 30% by compressing their margins. And the remaining 65 to 70% is passed on to consumers through higher prices. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the current tariff regime has raised consumer price levels by 0.6 to 1.1% in the short term. The Federal Reserve finds that tariffs in place through the end of 2025 have raised prices on core goods by 3.1% through February 2026.

$2,510 more per American household in 2026

The Joint Economic Committee of Congress — in its Democratic minority component — published a detailed breakdown in March 2026: American families will pay an average of $2,510.63 in tariff costs in 2026, a $768 increase from the $1,744 paid during Trump's first year. In cumulative terms, American consumers will have collectively paid out $231.35 billion between February 2025 and January 2026. The projection for all of 2026 rises to $332.9 billion. The Peterson Institute estimates the average annual household loss at $1,230, the Tax Foundation at $1,500, and the Yale Budget Lab within a range of $800 to $1,300, depending on whether Section 122 temporary tariffs are extended or not.

What these figures do not say explicitly but logic compels: lower-income households are hit proportionally harder. The Yale Budget Lab calculates that the current tariff regime raises the effective federal rate on households in the bottom income quintile by 0.9 percentage points, versus 0.7 for the top quintile. Tariffs are a consumption tax — and consumption taxes are by nature regressive.

China's record surplus: $1.19 trillion despite everything

The trillion no one expected

Here is the number that captures the full irony of the situation: in 2025, under the relentless barrage of American tariffs, China posted a trade surplus of $1.189 trillion — an absolute global record, a first in modern history, comparable in scale to the GDP of Saudi Arabia. This surplus represents a 20% increase over 2024. Chinese exports grew by 5.5% over the full year, despite a 20% drop in shipments to the United States. This is not an accident. It is a calculated strategic reorientation, executed with formidable precision.

January–February 2026 data confirm the momentum: Chinese exports surged 21.8% year-on-year, pulverizing economist forecasts polled by Reuters that had projected 7.1%. The trade surplus for the first two months of 2026 came in at $213.62 billion, well above the $179.6 billion anticipated. In May 2026, the monthly surplus reached $105.43 billion — the largest since January, according to Trading Economics. Over the first five months of 2026, the cumulative surplus stood at $451.71 billion. China is on track for a third consecutive year of a surplus approaching the trillion-dollar mark.

The drivers of this resilience

How does one explain this performance in the middle of a trade war? Several structural factors favor Beijing. First, the accelerated diversification of export markets: since January 2025, Chinese companies have massively redirected their shipments toward Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In 2025, the Global South's share of total exports rose to 44%, up from 35% in 2015, according to S&P Global. Exports to ASEAN surged 13.4%, to Africa 25.8%. Belt and Road Initiative partners accounted for 4.02 trillion yuan in trade over the first two months of 2026, up 20% year-on-year. Second, a weakened yuan makes Chinese exports more price-competitive. Third, an industrial depth no other emerging economy can yet replicate.

According to Standard Chartered economist Ding Shuang, cited by The Star, "industrial upgrading, price competitiveness, and trade partner diversification supported the resilience of the export sector even as volumes to the United States fell." The automobile sector perfectly illustrates this pivot: vehicle exports grew nearly 19% in 2025, reaching 5 million units. Exports of pure electric vehicles exploded by 48.8% — and China remains the world's top automobile exporter for the third consecutive year.

The great reorientation: toward the Global South and ASEAN

Beijing pivots, and the world opens its arms

Beijing's strategy is not a passive defense. It is a commercial offensive disguised as reorientation. China's trade with ASEAN grew 20.3% to reach 1.24 trillion yuan (roughly $180 billion) in the first two months of 2026, according to Chinese customs data. In 2025, ASEAN's trade deficit with China already exceeded $190 billion, according to the Asia Society — with regional economies absorbing growing volumes of Chinese products without necessarily gaining a symmetric benefit.

In Latin America, the phenomenon is equally pronounced. In 2025, Chinese exporters had already "shifted gears toward Latin America," according to Lundgreen's Investor Insights, as the placeholder tariff negotiated at 30% made the U.S. market less profitable. Over January–August 2025, Chinese exports to emerging regions grew by nearly 11%. China now exports more than 50% of its volumes to the Global South — $1.6 trillion — than it sends to the United States and Western Europe combined ($1 trillion), according to S&P Global.

The troubling side effects for local economies

This reorientation is not without friction. The emerging economies absorbing this flow of Chinese exports find themselves flooded with products that are often cheaper than their own domestic output. The Helmut Schmidt Universität notes that China is bypassing local manufacturers by selling machinery, consumer goods, and clean energy equipment at prices that few mid-income economies can compete with. Within middle-income countries, China's trade balance has shifted from a historic deficit to a surplus between 2021 and 2022, signaling growing industrial dominance over sectors those countries were specifically trying to develop.

This is where one of the most perverse consequences of Trump's trade war becomes apparent: by unilaterally closing U.S. doors to Chinese exports, Washington has pushed billions worth of products toward third-party markets — markets that are often also potential U.S. allies in the geopolitical competition with China. Beijing is thus gaining market share and influence in strategically vital regions, while America debates the legality of its own tariffs.

Western allies in the crosshairs: real collateral damage

Europe, Japan, South Korea — hit and hurt

Trump's trade war does not target China alone. Far from it. The initial "Liberation Day" regime struck allies and adversaries indiscriminately. Europe faces tariffs of 15% on its exports to the United States under the new post-SCOTUS measures, with sectors such as automobiles, chemicals, and industrial equipment particularly exposed. A quarter of European consumers are said to have boycotted American products in response, sharpening transatlantic tensions. The British Chambers of Commerce estimates that the new tariff regime adds up to £3 billion to the cost of British exports to the United States, affecting 40,000 British businesses.

Japan and South Korea — essential allies in any China containment strategy — were struck despite their steadfast loyalty. Japan, facing 24% tariffs under the initial regime, saw its vehicle exports to the United States fall by 24.7% year-on-year as early as May 2025, according to the Japanese Ministry of Finance. The Japan External Trade Organization estimates that automobile tariffs could reduce Japan's GDP by 0.3% this year. In South Korea, the Bank of Korea projects a 0.6% decline in total exports, and up to 4% for exports to the United States, with the automotive, semiconductor, and consumer electronics sectors on the front line.

The paradox of allies pushed toward China

The Canadian case illustrates the most alarming dynamic. After months of U.S. tariffs, Ottawa signed a trade agreement with Beijing in January 2026 covering electric vehicles, agriculture, and energy. Canada scrapped its 100% tax on Chinese EVs in exchange for tariff reductions on Canadian canola. According to Axios on January 16, 2026, Brookings Institution researcher Ryan Chan commented: "These evolving dynamics are precisely what China wants." He described the palpable relief in Beijing at the disintegration of Western alliances, noting it was "an immense relief for a very anxious Beijing."

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas put it with welcome bluntness in early 2026: "China and Russia must be savoring this. They are the ones winning from discord among allies." Tariffs make no distinction between friends and enemies — and this is precisely what Foreign Policy denounces in several analyses: a strategy without geopolitical coherence that "sabotages American producers broadly" and "fails to distinguish between friend and foe, undermining alliances in any coherent China policy."

Devastated sectors: steel, electronics, textiles, agriculture

Steel and aluminum: the protection that costs too much

Tariffs on steel (40.1%, rising to 50% in June 2026) and aluminum are presented as a victory for American unions. In practice, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, these protections raise input costs for all American manufacturers that use these metals as raw materials. The U.S. automotive sector, aerospace, construction — all see their production costs rise, eroding their international competitiveness. The company cited by Reuters, Spreetail, declares having paid roughly $50 million in tariffs in 2025 and is planning "no price adjustments" — meaning the pressure migrates to margins or consumers.

Textiles and consumer electronics illustrate another perverse mechanism: the bulk of production remains in Asia, because no substitution capacity exists in the United States in the short term. Tariffs have not brought factories back to American soil — they have simply made products more expensive without creating locally significant numbers of new jobs. Eva St. Clair, co-owner of a small business specializing in children's clothing, told Reuters in February 2026: "We have absorbed almost all of the costs related to tariffs — we have no reason to refund anyone." Her business survived partly thanks to a tip jar that collected $8,000 from supportive customers.

Agriculture: the wound reopened

American agriculture — and soybeans in particular — bears deep scars from the first Trump trade war. China reduced its purchases of American soybeans, developed its own production capacity through other supplier countries, and signed alternative agreements. Under the October 2025 truce framework, Beijing agreed to buy 12 million metric tons of American soybeans by year-end — but analysts cited by Foreign Policy emphasize this is a tactical concession, not a structural shift. China will continue diversifying its agricultural supply sources so as to never again be vulnerable to U.S. pressure in this sector.

Meanwhile, Chinese retaliatory tariffs on American agricultural products — before their partial easing — cost billions to states like Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, Republican states that form the heart of Trump's electoral base. This political contradiction — hitting his own voters — was only resolved through emergency federal subsidies to farmers, adding to public spending precisely what tariffs were supposed to generate in revenues.

Beijing's strategy: three lessons learned from Trump

Patient, precise, calibrated

Foreign Policy published a masterful analysis in December 2025 titled "Three Lessons China Has Learned from Trump." The first: Trump's maximalist threats do not hold. The most extreme tariffs have systematically caved under market pressure, lobbyist pressure, or the president's appetite for "any deal he can call a victory." The second: accelerated trade diversification has given Beijing the margin it needed to absorb American pressure without showing weakness. The third: targeted retaliation targeting vulnerabilities in the U.S. supply chain — critical minerals, rare earths, electronic components — proved far more effective than frontal counter-tariff offensives.

Beijing's posture for 2026 is described with clarity in the Foreign Policy analysis: "Patience, precision, and calibrated leverage have become the defining arsenal of Beijing's statecraft." China is not seeking to win a trade war — it is seeking to make American coercion progressively ineffective, to deepen its ties with Europe, Southeast Asia, and Gulf states, and to accelerate its technological self-sufficiency. It is playing on a decade-long horizon, while Washington changes its legal strategy every six months.

The weapon of critical minerals

Beijing holds a trump card that Washington has yet to neutralize: control over critical minerals. China produces or refines an overwhelming share of the lithium, cobalt, rare earths, and gallium used in semiconductors, electric vehicles, and precision military equipment. In 2025, China tested targeted restrictions on these exports — with results that confirmed, according to Foreign Policy, that "the U.S. supply chain is fragile." This demonstration of force has not been forgotten: it now constitutes the implicit ceiling on any American tariff escalation, an economic red line Washington hesitates to cross.

Trump's chief trade negotiator, Jamieson Greer, admitted before the Council on Foreign Relations in May 2026 that he had "come to accept the fact that China was not going to become a capitalist giant in the way the Chinese political system works." He stated that the hope of forcing a structural economic transformation in Beijing was "largely over." That is an extraordinary admission: the grand theory of convergence through trade — which had guided thirty years of American policy — is officially buried. After six years of trade war, Washington acknowledges that tariff pressure has not changed China's economic model. It has hardened it.

The "China shock" version 2.0 hits Europe

The EU in the crosshairs of Chinese overcapacity

Where the United States has partially closed its doors, Chinese products have found other outlets — and Europe is on the front line. Axios published on June 16, 2026, an analysis of the "China shock" on the agenda of the G7 chaired by France. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated it plainly: "2025 will be noted as the first time all member states had a trade deficit with China. This situation is not sustainable." Chinese exports are now penetrating sectors Europe considered its strongholds: automobiles, chemicals, machine tools, batteries, and clean energy equipment.

The European Commission is developing in response an "overcapacity" mechanism targeting sectors flooded by subsidized imports. Discussions center on priority rules for European-made goods in the battery, wind energy, and clean technology sectors. This is a belated acknowledgment that European industry is just as vulnerable to Chinese trade practices as American industry was a decade ago. The great irony? Trump was right about the fundamental problem. But his indiscriminate treatment — tariffs on allies and adversaries lumped together — prevented the construction of a united Western front that would have been far more effective.

The paradox of transatlantic convergence

On the substance of the China challenge, there is today an unprecedented convergence among Washington, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo: China represents a structural threat to Western industries, and action must be taken. The instruments diverge, the timetables too, and transatlantic tariff rivalries paralyze coordination. But intellectually, the diagnosis is shared. Foreign Policy writes that "as the U.S. role as global trade hegemon weakens, China will take its place" — and this can still be prevented, provided a coherent allied strategy that Trump's tariffs are making harder to build, not easier.

China, for its part, plays adeptly on these divisions. It offers Europe a commercial opening of convenience — signaling willingness to reduce industrial subsidies and open its markets — while continuing to flood the continent with below-cost products. And it offers Southeast Asian countries, Gulf states, and African nations concrete alternatives to American dependence, at the very moment when Trump's tariffs fuel resentment toward Washington.

The Supreme Court, Congress, the Constitution: the tariff soap opera

A president constrained by his own judges

On February 20, 2026, when six Supreme Court justices — three of them Trump's own appointees — struck down the IEEPA tariffs, an entire theory of executive power collapsed. The Roberts decision makes clear that Congress never delegated to the executive the authority to impose general tariffs through emergency economic laws. For Trump, this is an institutional rebuke, but not a final ruling. According to Foreign Policy, the $175 billion illegally collected between early 2025 and the decision may potentially require refunds — a multi-year administrative nightmare.

The U.S. Congress now finds itself in a central position. If Section 122 expires on July 24, 2026, without legislative renewal, the tariff regime partially collapses. If Congress votes to extend it, it takes political ownership of tariffs it had long allowed Trump to carry alone. Some moderate Republicans have quietly expressed relief following the Supreme Court decision, according to Axios. The practical result could be growing pressure for negotiated bilateral trade agreements, sector by sector, country by country — a more targeted approach, but also slower and less likely to create the strategic shock sought against Beijing.

The refunds: $126 billion in uncertainty

According to analysis by Trade Partnership Worldwide, the struck-down IEEPA tariffs represent roughly $126 billion at stake across the United States over the period from February to December 2025. California alone would have paid $26 billion of those tariffs. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in his dissent, noted that the Court "refrain[s] from commenting today on how the government should proceed to refund the billions of dollars it has collected from importers." Years of legal proceedings are expected, and nothing guarantees that importing companies — let alone end consumers — will ever see those refunds.

In the meantime, Josh Ketter, CEO of Spreetail, a large e-commerce company, told Reuters that the refund process could take "a few years." His company paid roughly $50 million in tariffs in 2025 — and has announced "no planned price reduction." What consumers have paid in surcharges for more than a year will likely not be returned to them, even if the tariffs are ruled illegal. Legal uncertainty has settled in as a structural feature of the American commercial landscape.

The sectoral ledger: real winners and structural losers

A handful of actual American winners

It would be inaccurate to claim that tariff policy has no American beneficiaries. Steel and aluminum producers have enjoyed genuine protection, with domestic prices elevated by tariff barriers. Companies like Nucor and U.S. Steel have seen their margins improve. The semiconductor sector benefits from massive public investment — the CHIPS Act — combined with technology export restrictions to China that create captive value in the United States. Some financial and insurance service providers also benefit from the tightening of domestic supply chains.

Internationally, certain countries have benefited from the reorientation of production chains: Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and India, which are absorbing a portion of orders once placed with China. According to Bloomberg on June 22, 2026, under the new post-SCOTUS tariff regime, the Philippines could benefit from a reduction of nearly 7 percentage points in their tariff rate compared to April 2025. Pakistan could see its tariffs drop by 19 points to 10%. These are modest gains in a chaotic global commercial realignment.

The list of losers is longer

But the list of structural losers is longer and heavier. Low- and middle-income American consumers bear the greatest share of the tariff shock. American exporters — Boeing, Merck, General Electric — see their input costs swell and their export markets shrink in the face of retaliatory tariffs. Small and mid-sized importing businesses have neither the legal resources nor the cash reserves to absorb lasting cost increases of 20 to 40%. Japan and South Korea — indispensable allies in any China strategy — suffer from trade distortions that fuel anti-American sentiment. And the United Kingdom, already bruised by Brexit, sees its exports subject to higher tariffs than before the post-SCOTUS realignment, according to analysis by Global Trade Alert cited by CNBC in February 2026.

The overall picture — drawn without bias — reveals a trade policy that has fragmented the Western alliance far more than it has isolated China. The winners are concentrated and often politically very visible (Pennsylvania steelworkers, Arizona semiconductor factories). The losers are diffuse — millions of households, thousands of small businesses, dozens of allied countries. This is the classic structure of protectionism: the benefits are concentrated, the costs dispersed and politically invisible.

The central thesis: the trade war paradoxically strengthens Beijing

Five mechanisms of unintentional reinforcement

The thesis of this investigation can now be stated with precision, supported by the data gathered. Trump's trade war paradoxically strengthens Beijing through five distinct mechanisms. First mechanism: tariffs have forced China to accelerate its commercial diversification toward markets it might never have developed as quickly otherwise, permanently reducing its dependence on the United States and Europe — and therefore its vulnerability to future pressure. Second mechanism: by striking allies and adversaries indiscriminately, tariffs have fractured the Western alliance that would be the only force capable of creating an effective trade front against Chinese mercantilist practices.

Third mechanism: American legal instability and tariff unpredictability have reinforced China's image as a more stable and reliable trade partner in the eyes of many emerging countries — exactly the message Beijing wanted to send. Fourth mechanism: tariffs have generated inflationary pressure in the United States that reduces Washington's capacity to fund ambitious industrial policies — the CHIPS Act, green infrastructure investments — which are the only truly effective instruments against long-term Chinese industrial dominance. Fifth mechanism: the legal challenge to tariffs has mobilized enormous political and legal resources, delaying or complicating the adoption of more targeted and better-calibrated restrictions against Beijing's specific practices.

Trump = necessary evil, but poorly calibrated

Things must be named precisely, without ideological complacency. Trump was right to identify the problem: China has indeed pursued, over two decades, an aggressive, subsidized, and unfair trade policy that has hollowed out American manufacturing and weakened Western industrial power. The excessive softness of his predecessors — convinced that economic integration would bring about China's democratization — was a monumental strategic error. On that diagnosis, Trump is right.

But the treatment is poorly calibrated. An effective tariff policy against China would have, according to several analysts from Foreign Policy and the Peterson Institute, proceeded differently: targeting above all the strategic sectors and specific practices that are illegal under WTO rules, building a coalition of allies before acting — to maximize mass effect and minimize collateral damage — and maintaining sufficient legal predictability for businesses to plan their investments. Trump's tariff war room chose surprise and maximum pressure. The result: Beijing holds out, allies drift away, and American consumers foot the bill.

What should be done differently? The credible alternatives

A targeted, allied, and legal strategy

The question is not whether the West should challenge China's economic model — it absolutely must. The question is how. Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, in a Foreign Affairs article cited by Axios, frame the answer: "China has the scale, and the United States does not — at least not autonomously. The only viable path runs through partnerships with others." An effective trade policy against China must be multilateral by nature — bringing in the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and ASEAN nations — to create a critical mass Beijing cannot ignore.

Within that framework, tariffs retain a legitimate but targeted role: surtaxing products made with illegal state subsidies, responding to Chinese market access restrictions in specific sectors, protecting strategic industries involved in defense or breakthrough technologies. The EU model with its countervailing duties on Chinese electric vehicles — imperfect, contested, but targeted and legally sound — is closer to what effective pro-Western tariffs should look like than the chaotic "Liberation Day" regime.

Industrial investment as a counter-offensive

The lasting answer to Chinese industrial dominance is not tariff-based — it is productive. The United States has begun investing massively through the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. These industrial policies are the right long-term responses: they rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity, attract private investment into strategic sectors, and create the skilled jobs that tariffs alone cannot generate. But they are slow — their effects will be measured in decades, not quarters. And their funding is undermined by budget deficits exacerbated by potential refunds of illegal tariffs and the economic costs of tariff-driven inflation.

The real strategic contest with China is won in advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and clean energy — fields where China is investing massively and where the West must maintain or rebuild its technological edge. Tariffs can buy time. They cannot win the war. And if poorly calibrated, they consume political and economic resources the West needs to fight the real battles ahead. The West has the resources to wage this competition. The question is whether it still has the collective will to do so.

Conclusion: A strategy that helps the adversary it wants to weaken

The balance sheet of a poorly waged war

At the end of this investigation, the verdict is severe but documented. Trump's trade war has produced results that are the inverse of its central objectives: it has not weakened the Chinese economy, whose trade surplus has reached historic heights; it has not massively reshored American industry, whose production costs have increased; it has not consolidated the Western alliances needed for an effective containment of Beijing — quite the contrary, it has weakened them. The real losers are low- and middle-income American consumers, small and mid-sized importing businesses, and Western allies facing unjustified tariffs in light of their geopolitical loyalty.

China, for its part, absorbed the shock, pivoted to new markets with formidable efficiency, and emerged with greater trade diversification, a reinforced image of stability in emerging countries, and the confirmation that the United States can be eroded by its own contradictions. Beijing has not won the trade war — but it is winning the peace that allows it to prepare for the battles ahead.

What the West must take away

Three lessons are essential for the future. The first: tariffs are not a strategy — they are tactics. And without strategy, tactics turn against those who deploy them. The second: confronting China alone is a mistake that even the United States, for all its power, cannot afford in an era of global technological competition. The third: the real weapon against China's industrial model is productive investment, innovation, and the rebuilding of a democratic coalition that speaks with one voice on the rules of international trade. That is longer, harder, less spectacular than a trade war declaration. But it is what can actually work. The West has the resources to wage this battle. The question is whether it still has the collective will.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Sources

Primary sources

The Guardian — China reports record trillion-dollar trade surplus despite Trump tariffs — January 14, 2026

Reuters — Don't bet on lower prices, businesses say, even after emergency Trump tariffs were struck down — February 24, 2026

Foreign Policy — Trump's new tariffs are also illegal — February 26, 2026

Secondary sources

Axios — Fear of the "China shock" shapes EU trade policy at the G7 summit — June 16, 2026

Foreign Policy — Three lessons China has learned from Trump — December 30, 2025

Foreign Policy — What awaits Trump's trade war after the Supreme Court — February 23, 2026

Axios — As Trump alienates allies, China capitalizes — January 16, 2026

Bloomberg — Trump builds a new U.S. tariff wall in a realignment of winners and losers — June 22, 2026