US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is pushing for a coordinated approach with the EU, Canada, and other G7 allies to confront China’s massive trade surplus, signaling that Washington views bilateral tariffs alone as insufficient to reshape global trade dynamics.
The numbers behind the push
China’s goods trade surplus hit a record $1.2 trillion in 2025, a figure Bessent has repeatedly characterized as unsustainable. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly the entire GDP of Mexico, generated purely from the gap between what China sells to the world and what it buys back.
US tariffs implemented after President Trump’s return to office in 2025 have made a dent in the bilateral picture. The trade deficit between the US and China reportedly fell to $73.9 billion in the first half of 2026, roughly one-third lower than the same period a year earlier.
But Bessent has been candid about a frustrating side effect. Chinese exports aren’t disappearing. They’re being rerouted to other markets, flooding allies with the same goods that US tariffs were designed to curtail.
