After a strong rebound in July, the combined value of goods traded between the U.S. and China dipped in August 2025. The release of trade data for this month was delayed until 19 November 2025 because of the record 43-day shutdown of nonessential U.S. government functions that ended last week.
Exports from the U.S. to China totaled $8.272 billion, which were down 11% from July's level and down nearly 37% year-over-year. Imported goods shipped from China to the U.S. totaled $25.133 billion, which were down nearly 5% month-over-month and about 31% since August 2024.
The combined value of trade between the U.S. and China for August 2025 is $33.1 billion, a 6.5% decrease from July's showing.
The trailing twelve month average of the combined total of goods exchanged between the U.S. and China continued falling in August. It now falls 15.3% below a counterfactual projection of how the value of trade between the two nations would have grown in the absence of the global tariff war. The following chart presents the monthly data for the combined value of goods exchanged between the U.S. and China. It also presents the trailing twelve month average, which smooths out much of the year-to-year seasonal variation in the trade data in the period from January 2017 through August 2025.
On 1 November 2025, the U.S. and China struck a new truce in their tariff war that lowered tariffs considerably more than their 28 June deal, though we won't see its effect in the data until November 2025's data becomes available early in 2026. In the meantime, we anticipate we'll continue tracking an overall downward trend in trade between the U.S. and China until the trade between the two countries following the deal starts to gain traction.
References
U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT900). U.S. Trade in Goods with China, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Nominal Figures, Total Census Basis. [Online database]. Accessed 19 November 2025.
Image credit: Empty Storage Container photo by Moj Box on Unsplash.
Labels: trade
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