Which President's First-Term Trade Policies Hurt Trade More?

Between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which U.S. President’s anti-free trade policies did more to negatively impact trade between the United States and China?

You probably answered “Donald Trump”. Are you sure?

Well, buckle up, because all the international trade data for the recently departed Biden administration is in and we now have final numbers that directly allow us to compare the real impact each President had on trade with China during their first term in office.

Before we go any further, we should note that our analytical job to answer this question was made a lot easier because of a strange similarity in the timing of each President’s first major action involving trade between the U.S. and China. For both Presidents, that action occurred in September of their second year in office. For Donald Trump, that was the start of tariff war with China in 2018. For Joe Biden, that was the start of export restrictions on advanced computer chips in 2022. The practical impact of that strange similarity is their respective trade policies with China can be measured over an equal number of months.

Despite that similarity, there is one important difference. 2020′s Coronavirus Pandemic also negatively impacted trade between the U.S. and China. The pandemic affected the trade numbers recorded during President Trump’s first term in the period also containing the impact of his China trade policies. It does not however affect the numbers recorded during the period covering the impact of President Biden’s China trade policies.

Fortunately, we had already accounted for that complicating factor thanks to a counterfactual of how the total value of goods exchanged between the U.S. and China would have changed following December 2019′s “Phase One” trade deal. That counterfactual was based on how trade between the two nations recovered after the 2008-09 recession, which turned out to provide a very good prediction of how this trade would actually recover after September 2020, after the main negative effect of the pandemic had passed. The effect of the pandemic was to deepen and delay the negative impact to U.S. China trade, but the recovery path was very similar within a small margin of error.

The following chart summarizes the cumulative negative impact that resulted from both President Trump’s and President Biden’s respective China trade policies during their final 29 months in office. It also shows the relative contribution of 2020′s Coronavirus Pandemic to President Trump’s overall trade figures, while indicating the negative impact attributable to each President’s trade policies.

Regardless of whether the negative impact of 2020′ Coronavirus Pandemic is included or not, President Biden’s trade policies had a greater negative impact on trade with China than President Trump’s policies did during his first term in office. After accounting for the negative impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on that trade, we find President Biden’s trade policies had over twice the negative impact.

We’ve also completed the charts we previously presented in telling a trade story back in January, which now run fully through January 2025 and visualize the data behind our negative impact chart. All the dollar figures are adjusted for inflation and are presented in terms of constant 2017 U.S. dollars. The next chart shows how the total value of goods exchanged between the U.S. and China changed from January 2017 through January 2025, covering both Presidents’ first terms in office.

The third chart shows how much the inflation-adjusted total value of goods exchanged between the U.S. and China changed as a percentage of their pre-trade restriction peak for both U.S. Presidents. For Donald Trump’s first term in office, this percentage is determined with respect to the peak reached in September 2018, for Joe Biden, that peak is determined with respect to the peak reached in September 2022.

The cumulative values totaled in the first chart are measured with respect to the pre-trade restriction peaks for both President Trump and President Biden.

The answer of which President’s trade policies with China were more negative is really clear. It takes a pandemic to even make them close, and even then, President Biden’s anti-free trade legacy is more negative.

References

U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT900). U.S. Trade in Goods with China, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Nominal Figures, Total Census Basis. [Online database]. Accessed 14 March 2025.

U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT900). U.S. Trade in Goods with World, Seasonally Adjusted, Nominal Figures, Total Census Basis. [Excel spreadsheet]. Accessed 14 March 2025.

U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT900). Real U.S. Trade in Goods with World, Seasonally Adjusted, Chained 2017 U.S. Dollars, Total Census Basis. [Excel spreadsheet]. Accessed 14 March 2025.

Image credit: Blue, red, and yellow intermodal containers photo by Paul Teysen on Unsplash.