Is America really buying less from China?

Donald Trump greeted Xi Jinping on an airbase runway outside Washington, the first time in 11 years a US president met a foreign leader there.

China's president landed at Joint Base Andrews early on September 24, India time, on his first state visit to the US in more than a decade. Minutes later, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two sides would extend their trade truce by two months, to January 10. China has not publicly confirmed the new date.

Xi and Trump lead the world's two biggest economies. At market exchange rates, America's is bigger: US$32.4 trillion this year, against China's US$20.9 trillion, according to International Monetary Fund projections. Measured by what money actually buys in each country, or purchasing power parity, China's is bigger at 44.3 trillion "international dollars".

China is also growing faster. The IMF expects it to grow 4.6 per cent this year, twice the 2.3 per cent it expects for the US.

US purchases from China have been falling. The US bought US$156.4 billion of goods from China between January and July this year, down by nearly half from US$296.5 billion for the same duration in 2018.

China now supplies less than eight per cent of the goods America buys from abroad, an India Today analysis of the same data shows. Among China's five biggest sales to America, phones, toys and clothes fell hardest in 2025, US Census Bureau product data show.

Take the same seven months, January to July, in every year since 2018. That keeps the seasons fair, since trade usually dips around the Lunar New Year. US buying from China peaked in 2022, at US$317.8 billion for those months. It has slid since, with only 2024 holding level. This year's total is 19.4 per cent below the US$194.0 billion for 2025.

Full-year figures from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis tell the same story. China's sales to the US in 2025 were far below their 2018 and 2022 highs, and its surplus with America has shrunk with them.

The other side barely moved. US sales to China stayed at US$65.2 billion in January to July, almost the same as a year ago.

A falling total can hide a bigger shift: China's share of everything America buys from abroad.

In the 12 months to December 2018, China supplied 21.2 per cent of US goods imports. In the 12 months to July 2026, it supplied 7.9 per cent, our analysis found. That is the lowest in the series, which started in 2018.

China also takes a smaller slice of what America sells abroad: 4.5 per cent over the 12 months to July, down from 7.2 per cent in 2018, the same analysis shows. That, too, is the lowest in the series.

The US trade gap with China has shrunk too. It stood at US$165.1 billion over the 12 months to July, down from US$418.2 billion over 2018.

China has not stopped selling. Its trade surplus with the whole world has more than tripled since 2018. Meanwhile, its surplus with the US has more than halved, World Bank, Chinese customs and BEA figures show.

Product data for full-year 2025 show what is flowing, and what is not. Phones and other household goods were China's biggest sale to America in 2025, at US$39.3 billion. That was down 39.1 per cent from 2024. Toys, games and sports goods fell 37.1 per cent, to US$19.4 billion. In contrast, civilian aircraft and parts led US sales to China, at US$15.9 billion, up 37.3 per cent. Chips came next, at US$10.9 billion, up 10.2 per cent.

Soybeans are the odd one out. US soybean sales to China fell 76.3 per cent in 2025, to US$3.0 billion, the lowest since at least 2018, the Census Bureau data show. Under last year's deal, China agreed to buy at least 12 million tonnes of US soybeans in the last two months of 2025, and 25 million tonnes a year in 2026, 2027, and 2028, according to the White House. The trade data count dollars, not tonnes, so they cannot show whether China is keeping that promise.advertisementWHAT THE TRUCE HAS NOT FIXEDThe truce is older than it looks. The US cut its "reciprocal" tariff on Chinese goods from 125 per cent to 10 per cent from May 14, 2025. That pause was extended twice before this week's announcement.

Yet in 11 of the 14 months from June 2025 to July 2026, the US bought less from China than in the same month a year earlier, according to Census Bureau data. The exceptions were the latest three, May to July 2026. In July, purchases rose 2.6 per cent, to US$27.1 billion. Those three months are set against the tariff peak and the first months of the truce in 2025, an unusual year to compare with.

These figures do not prove the tariffs caused the fall. Prices and demand move trade too. The data shows a fall associated with the tariff fight.advertisementWHAT COMES NEXTTrump and Xi are expected to meet again at two more summits this year: the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Shenzhen on November 18 and 19 and the G20 Summit in Miami on December 14 and 15. Bessent himself sounded unsure. "I don't know whether a bigger deal can be done," he said.

The welcome is over. The truce now runs to January 10 — if Beijing agrees. The Census figures will show whether trade picks up again.- Ends

Dipu Rai is an investigative and data journalist based in New Delhi focusing on data-driven stories on finance, health, politics and environment. He is also actively involved in analyses and visualisations of data at India Today's Data Intelligence Unit (DIU).

Dipu is well-versed in SQL, Python, R, Tableau and produces prototype visualisations quickly as per requirement. He is specialised in dealing with a variety of datasets with parsing, scraping and cleaning. Doing Spatial analysis is his hobby, and he frequently uses location intelligence platforms like Carto and QGIS.

After completing the master in economics, Dipu has started his career as a business journalist. He has more than ten years of experience in broadcast, print and digital platforms.

Dipu's work has sparked several financial investigations and won some of journalism's highest honours. He was awarded the Redink Award, in 2015 for financial crime reporting. He has translated Raymond Williams's book 'Television' in Hindi. His hobbies include reading codes, learning new visualisation techniques. In his spare time he likes to read books, listen to music and watch films.