US trade office lays out Trump’s case against China as ‘Liberation Day’ nears

The United States’ annual report on global trade barriers, released days before President Donald Trump is expected to announce a slew of “reciprocal tariffs”, carries some clues about what markets will be targeted in the future, analysts said – and the considerable volume of pages dedicated to China confirms the world’s second-largest economy will be at the top of Trump’s agenda.

The nearly 400-page report, released by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) on Monday, arrived two days before Trump’s “Liberation Day”, when details on the new tariffs are scheduled to be unveiled. The president has touted these import duties as a means to “free” the country from the unfair advantages he believes its major trading partners enjoy.

The section on China – which at almost 50 pages dwarfs the limited space dedicated to most other countries – raised “long-standing” concerns, such as Beijing’s failure to fully implement commitments made in the “phase-one” trade deal between the countries signed in 2020.

It also laid out a range of policies the US regards as trade barriers from Beijing, including industrial subsidies, investment restrictions and issues over the protection of intellectual property.

“The length of the [China section] does illustrate where the US administration’s priorities are. China is likely going to be either the explicit or implicit target of many future US trade actions,” said Nick Marro, principal economist for Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

“All that being said, the inclusion of markets like Australia, Bangladesh, Thailand and Taiwan in the report also suggests these economies aren’t safe either. We can use this as a framework to get a sense of which markets might be next in the firing line and [why].”