Trump has not released a four-year plan to phase out China imports

During his second term, President Donald Trump has focused significant attention on trade, raising tariffs on a wide variety of countries and products. But when it comes to trade with China, the U.S. continues to run its largest trade deficit in goods of any of its trading partners.

As he was seeking to return to the White House, Trump said, "We will revoke China's Most Favored Nation trade status, and adopt a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods — everything from electronics to steel to pharmaceuticals."

To date, the U.S. has not formally revoked China's most-favored nation status, which refers to a promise to treat a country as well as it treats any other country that receives preferential trade treatment. We found no evidence that the White House has released a plan to phase out essential Chinese imports over four years. The White House did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

So how does U.S. trade with China look, one year into Trump's second term? It's a mixed picture.

On the one hand, the U.S. reduced the size of its trade deficit in goods with China by more than 30% from 2024, when President Joe Biden was in office, to 2025, when Trump served for almost the whole year.

In a statement, the White House told PolitiFact that in 2018, "over 20% of America's imports came from China. That share has fallen to around 14% today, with numerous companies and industries moving their supply chains out of China and into the United States or other countries." The White House said that tighter access to the U.S. market has harmed China economically.

Trump "can reasonably claim this as a major success," said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He added, however, that imports from Taiwan and Vietnam rose sharply. 

That's important, Scissors said, because both Taiwan and Vietnam are common routes for indirectly shipping Chinese goods to the U.S. This would mean that U.S. reliance on Chinese goods hasn't fallen as much as the official trade data with China indicates.

China remains the third-biggest U.S. trading partner, with $414.7 billion in combined exports and imports. The United States' only bigger trading partners are its two next-door neighbors: Mexico, with $872.8 billion, and Canada, with $719.5 billion.

In 2025, the U.S. imported $308.4 billion of Chinese goods, compared to the $106.3 billion in U.S. goods that China imports. 

"The Trump administration has taken steps to reduce U.S. dependence on China, but I don't believe they have a public plan for which imports to eliminate and which to retain," Scissors said.

Scissors added that he thought it was unlikely that the Trump administration would release such a plan in the lead-up to Trump's scheduled April visit to China. 

The reduced trade deficit aligns with Trump's long-term goal of shrinking U.S. imports from China, but the apparent increase in shipping Chinese goods from third-party countries undercuts this progress. And Trump has neither formally withdrawn most favored nation status, as he promised, nor published a plan to cut key Chinese imports over four years. We rate this promise Stalled.