The use of tariffs by the Trump administration, and the corresponding retaliation by the Xi regime, pushed tariff rates on goods moving between the US and China to historic levels. The US-China trade conflict has become one of the most disruptive economic actions of the 21st century, and continues to have wide reaching economic effects, despite being somewhat overshadowed by the COVID pandemic in 2020. In order the quantify the escalation of the trade war, PIIE created an infographic chart showing the rise of US tariff rates as well as the Chinese response, the chart was periodically updated as new trade actions were instituted.

The "Phase One Agreement" signed at the end of 2019 was supposedly a major turning point the US China trade war. The agreement did end the escalation of tariffs on US and Chinese goods. However, the existing, historically high, tariff rates remained in place. Other aspects of the deal, such as Chinese purchase agreements on US goods, largely came to nothing as the COVID pandemic took center-stage in both domestic and international politics. To highlight the unrealistic targets and impossibility of Chinese businesses meeting the terms of the agreement, we created a series of charts that tracked Chinese imports from the US and compared that to the imports China would need to purchase to make its Phase One Deal purchase commitments. The chart was updated monthly and charted the increasing disparity between the purchase targets and actual Chinese purchases.

In 2018, the Trump administration undertook multiple trade actions against a variety of products and nations. These various trade actions hit some products multiple times, creating overlapping tariffs that were not apparent when taking the data at face value. Using very in depth research from Chad Bown and Eva Zhang, we created a venn diagram to illustrate the overlap of various trade actions and shed light on some of the less obvious consequences of protectionist policies by the Trump administration.