"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."
That's just one of many bits of wisdom that baseball great Yogi Berra dispensed over his life. But how tough is it to predict what happened in the past?
Let's play a game to find out. We're going to give you a set up involving trade between the U.S. and China so you can guess what actually happened next. And then we'll give you more background information and a chance to change your prediction. Once you've locked in your prediction of what happened in the past, we'll tell you what actually happened.
To play, just scroll down line by line, so you don't get to the answer before you've made your prediction. It's that easy, here we go!
At the start of November 2025, the U.S. and China reached a new truce in their tariff war, which started almost seven months earlier. If you were asked to predict how the total value of goods exchanged between these two nations would proceed to change during November 2025, after the trade deal was reached, which option would you choose?
- The total value of goods exchanged would rise.
- The total value of goods exchanged would stay the same.
- The total value of goods exchanged would fall.
Now, let's throw some extra information for you to consider in making your hypothetical wager. The U.S.-China tariff war significantly reduced the quantity of goods exchanged between the two nations, with the total value of goods plunging to near-2020 pandemic lows in the months ahead of the November 2025 truce. That's a big deal because the months of August and September typically represent the peak of China's exports to the U.S., with consumer goods flowing into the U.S. ahead of the Christmas holiday shopping season. Meanwhile, the months of October and November typically represent the peak of U.S. exports to China, which are dominated by shipments of soybeans following their annual harvest at this time of year.
Does that extra information change your thinking? Or will you stick with your original wager? We'll give you one last moment to decide....
Now that you've made your prediction, the following chart reveals the outcome. Did you make the right call?
The total value of goods exchanged between the U.S. and China fell in November 2025, both month-over-month and year-over-year. The reason why is the tariff war's disruption of trade between the two nations during the preceding months, which shrank the flow of goods in both directions and, more importantly, shrank the orders for the goods that might be exported.
By the time the tariff war truce was struck, the firms that do the actual importing and exporting of products didn't have orders for the goods they would normally be transacting set up, nor did they have any cargo ships lined up to transport them. Even if they had these things ready to go, since it typically takes about three weeks for the physical goods themselves to transit across the Pacific Ocean after the ships are loaded and leave their ports, most of the month of November would not have seen any uptick as a result of the deal. At least, not until the end of the final week of the month in the most optimistic of scenarios.
Now we'll make a prediction about what happens next. We will most likely see a reversal when the trade data for both December 2025 and January 2026 is reported in the months ahead, with a rising level of goods exchanged between the two nations.
What can we say? "The future ain't what it used to be."
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 29 January 2025.
Neon question mark photo by Simone Secci on Unsplash.
Labels: trade
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Closing values for previous trading day.
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