US-China Trade War Tariffs: An Up-to-Date Chart

Average US tariffs on Chinese exports now stand at 124.1 percent. These tariffs are more than 40 times higher than before the US-China tariff war began in 2018 and are already 6 times higher than the average US tariff on China of 20.8 percent when the second Trump administration began on January 20, 2025. The two Trump administrations together have now imposed special tariffs on China—either under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 or under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—covering all US goods imports from China. All told, the 103.3-percentage point increase in the average US tariff on imports from China during the second Trump term is also 6 times higher than the 16.2 percentage point total average tariff increase on US imports from China during the entire first Trump administration of January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021.

The second Trump administration has increased US average tariffs on imports from China by 103.3 percentage points through a number of different actions, not all of which were China-specific. Changes began with China-specific, 10 percentage point increases implemented on February 4 and March 4, 2025, covering all imports from China. The Trump administration then raised US tariffs on imports from all foreign sources of steel, aluminum, and derivative products on March 12 and on imports of automobiles on April 3. Next, on April 5 (10 percentage points), April 9 (74 percentage points), and April 10 (41 percentage points), the United States increased tariffs on imports from China by another 125 percentage points, albeit with some sectoral carveouts, including one implemented on April 11. The rest of the world was also impacted by the US tariff actions of April 5, 9, 10, and 11. (Note: Furthermore, on March 4, 2025, the US imposed new tariffs on certain imports from Canada and Mexico that ultimately did not "claim and qualify for" USMCA preferences. That tariff change is not reflected here.) The 103.3 percentage point average tariff increase differs from both the "125 percent" and "145 percent" increases mentioned by the president and White House on April 9 and 10, respectively, because the 103.3 percentage point increase accounts for numerous factors, including that the April 5, 9, and 10 tariff increases only applied to a subset of imports from China according to those executive orders and subsequent sectoral carveouts.

China has retaliated in three tranches in early 2025, lifting its average tariff on US exports to 147.6 percent, while increasing the scope of covered US exports initially from 58.3 percent to 63.0 percent, and then to 100 percent on April 10, when its retaliatory tariff of 84 percent affecting all imports from the United States went into effect.

As a result of numerous Trump administration actions, the average US tariff on all goods imports from the rest of the world increased from 3.0 percent to 10.3 percent between January 20, 2025 and April 11. (Note: the US tariff on all goods imports from the rest of the world temporarily increased to 15.7 percent for one day—on April 9—before President Trump, on that same day, reversed some of his earlier tariffs and paused their increase for 90 days.)

Under the Biden administration, which spanned January 20, 2021, to January 20, 2025, US-China tariffs remained fairly stable. The main exceptions were the increases in US tariffs on imports from China in September 2024 and January 2025, which raised the average US tariff on Chinese exports from 19.3 percent to 20.8 percent. (The product coverage was little changed; the US policy was primarily to increase tariff rates on already-covered products.)

During the first Trump administration, the February 14, 2020 implementation of the so-called US-China phase one agreement established new US tariffs on imports from China. US tariffs on Chinese exports in February 2020 averaged 19.3 percent, more than six times higher than in January 2018. Those tariffs covered 66.6 percent of US imports from China, or roughly $335 billion of trade (measured in terms of 2017 import levels).
Average Chinese tariffs on US exports starting in February 2020 were also at elevated levels of 21 percent, up from 8.0 percent prior to the trade war. China's retaliatory tariffs at the time covered 58.3 percent of imports from the United States, worth roughly $90 billion (measured in terms of 2017 import levels). On February 17, 2020, the Chinese government announced an exclusion process whereby Chinese companies could apply for a temporary exemption from the retaliatory tariffs. Nevertheless, China did not live up to the commitment of purchasing an additional $200 billion of US goods and services over 2020 and 2021, as established by the legal agreement signed on January 15, 2020.

Overall, the US-China trade war has proceeded in six stages between 2018 and today. The first six months of 2018 featured a moderate increase in tariffs.

Second, the months of July through September 2018 resulted in a sharp tariff increase on both sides: US average tariffs rose from 3.8 percent to 12.0 percent, and China's average tariffs increased from 7.2 percent to 18.3 percent.

In stage three, there was an 8-month period (September 25, 2018, through June 2019) of little change in tariffs.

From June to September 2019, another set of tariff increases kicked in.

In stage five, and despite the phase one agreement, tariffs between the two countries remained elevated but mostly stable until February 2025.

In the current stage six, the US has suddenly increased tariffs again by significant amounts and China has increased its average tariff by even more.

Also noteworthy is that China's average tariffs on imports from the rest of the world declined from 8.0 percent in early 2018 to 6.5 percent by early 2022, where they mostly remain today. Again, the United States increased its average tariffs on imports from the rest of the world from 2.2 percent in January 2018 to 10.3 percent today.

Note: This chart was updated from the original data available in Chad P. Bown, 2021, The US-China Trade War and Phase One Agreement (also published in the Journal of Policy Modeling 43, no. 4: 805-843). The chart does not include data on antidumping or countervailing duties. For information on those, as well as the temporary product exclusions that each side granted to the tariffs in 2018–20, see the paper. The chart has also been updated to fix an error in the original paper regarding the size of China's tariff change in January 2021.