Forget tariffs — Beijing is already choking off US exports on the sly

China juices trade war with nontariff barriers targeting MAGA-friendly U.S. export sectors.

A woman looks at the imported frozen beefs from the United States and Australia on display for sale at the Hema supermarket, in Beijing, April 8, 2025. | Andy Wong/AP

By Phelim Kine, Ben Lefebvre and Marcia Brown

04/12/2025 02:50 PM EDT

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Beijing is showing the Trump administration that tariffs aren’t the only weapon in a trade war.

Long before President Donald Trump fired the opening shots of a new U.S.-China trade war from the White House Rose Garden last week, Beijing had been working to perfect its stealth campaign blocking key U.S. agriculture and energy exports. The Chinese government over the past four months has halted or significantly curtailed direct imports of major U.S. commodities including beef, poultry and liquefied natural gas through an array of bureaucratic blocks and tricky third-party sales deals.

The so-called nontariff barriers to trade are even stickier than the escalating tariffs rippling across the global economy, analysts said. All together, the moves are an escalation of the curbs China has been honing since its bans on genetically modified foods a decade ago. And they provide Beijing added firepower in the ongoing U.S.-China trade war by targeting exports from Trump-friendly, deep-red states — think Iowa and Nebraska — with restrictions immune to possible workarounds for tariff barriers.

“A tariff, you can just pay it, and things just get more costly,” said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. “But this is a full restriction on your ability to send product to that country.”

The Chinese government knows where it can pinch U.S. exporters hardest. It has already declined to renew export licenses for hundreds of meatpacking plants,........

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