China and the US initiated formal economic and diplomatic relations in 1845 with the Treaty of Wanghia. While relations survived the collapse of the Qing dynasty, multiple regime changes, and the expansion of U.S. international influence, tensions with Mao Zedong’s nascent Communist regime, largely caused by China’s intervention in the Korean War, provoked the US to implement a trade embargo in 1950.

While the United Nations lifted a similar trade embargo at the end of the war in 1953, the U.S. did not follow suit and continued their embargo until 1972 (Chen 2006).

President Nixon officially lifted the trade embargo in 1972 and normalized relations between the two countries. Since then, China-US trade has boomed, growing largely unabated up until President Trump’s recent threats to the economic alliance between Washington D.C. and Beijing.

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The Trade War: 2018 - present

The U.S. Trade Deficit