After President Donald J. Trump slapped tariffs on Chinese bicycles in 2018, Arnold Kamler, then the chief executive of the bike maker Kent International, saw a curious trend play out in the bicycle industry.

Chinese bicycle factories moved their final manufacturing and assembly operations out of China, setting up new facilities in Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia and India. Using parts mostly from China, those companies made bicycles that they could export directly to the United States — without paying the 25 percent tariff had the bike been shipped straight from China.

The China that President-elect Donald Trump will face in 2025 is fundamentally different than the one he encountered when his first administration began in 2017, or even the one with which he negotiated a trade deal near the end of his term. Now, for the first time in more than four decades, China’s share of the world economy is shrinking—it peaked at just above 18 percent of global GDP in 2021 and stands at around 16 percent today.

Although China can inflict pain on the United States with the economic tools at its disposal if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his promise to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese imports, using those tools too aggressively risks backfiring on Beijing, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. 

In the weeks since the election, China has flaunted the ways in which it could hit back at the U.S. in the event of a new trade war with the U.S., including everything from choking off the metals needed for everyday products to punishing American companies that do business in China.

But using such tools too aggressively risks backfiring on Beijing. 

During former President Donald Trump's term in office, he promised that higher tariffs on American imports would reduce the country's large trade deficit.

At the time, many economists disputed that notion. Tariffs might marginally reduce the import side of the trade ledger, but they also reduce economic output (and therefore exports), so the net effect on the trade deficit was likely to be minuscule, they warned.

President Joe Biden called on his administration to ratchet up pressure on the Chinese steel industry as he brings his economic competition pitch to Pittsburgh, the heart of the American steel industry, on Wednesday, part of a three-day campaign trail swing through battleground Pennsylvania.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for sharply higher U.S. tariffs on Chinese metal products as part of a package of policies aimed at pleasing steelworkers in the swing state of Pennsylvania, at the risk of angering Beijing.

As he campaigned for reelection in the "Steel City" of Pittsburgh, Biden aides said the U.S. president was proposing raising to 25% the tariffs imposed by his predecessor Donald Trump on certain Chinese steel and aluminum products.

President Joe Biden called for tripling the tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum, a policy proposal timed for his meeting with union workers in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

While speaking before the United Steelworkers union, Biden will call upon U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to triple the tariffs from their average level of 7.5%.

Beijing is taking U.S. sanctions head-on with its latest round of restrictions targeting U.S.-based firms that gather open source data about business links to Xinjiang.

Why it matters: The sanctions expand on Beijing's previous efforts to criminalize certain kinds of research, intimidate individual researchers, and make it harder for companies to comply with U.S. sanctions against China. The escalating sanctions fight between the U.S. and China risks forcing companies to choose between the world's largest markets.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made a strong point at tonight's GOP presidential debate by criticizing former President Donald Trump's trade policies.

"You can't say he was good on trade," Christie said, directly rebutting a comment former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had made earlier in the evening. "He didn't change one Chinese policy in the process. He failed on it."

"All he did was impose tariffs, which raise the prices for every American," Christie added.