President Donald Trump’s historic tariffs, some of which the Supreme Court struck down Friday, remade trade in 2025 — and no country experienced as big a shift as China.
Thanks in large part to U.S. tariffs that at one point reached triple digits, the Asian manufacturing powerhouse’s share of the overall U.S. import market fell to 9 percent in 2025, compared to 13.4 percent in 2024, according to the Commerce Department’s trade report for December released Thursday.
That is China’s lowest market share since the early 2000s. Less than a decade ago, China accounted for one-fifth of annual U.S. imports.
U.S. imports from China fell to $308 billion in 2025, their lowest level since 2009 and a drop of more than 42 percent from the record high of $539 billion in 2018.
Factoring all the tariffs Trump announced last year, as well as the rollbacks he granted, Chinese goods faced an “effective” U.S. tariff rate of 30.9 percent in November, according to Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economic research at Fitch Ratings in New York, and his colleague Sarah Repucci. This included, but was not limited to, Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down.
Comparatively, the effective tariff rate was 19.7 percent for India, 12.7 percent for Vietnam, 8.1 percent for the European Union, 4.2 percent for Mexico, 3.7 percent for Canada and 3.5 percent for Taiwan, according to Fitch Ratings’ calculations.
“Basically what’s happening is as China is falling across the board, many Asian countries are increasing their share of U.S. imports,” Sonola told POLITICO, adding that Vietnam, Taiwan, Mexico and India were among the biggest beneficiaries.
Two categories of imports that include electric machinery, smartphones, computers and other related goods account for nearly half of U.S. imports from China. Below, we analyze the largest changes in those and several other categories of goods where imports from China fell as American companies shifted their supply chains last year.
Phones, games, computers and more imports from China fell sharply in 2025
Phones: The United States has imported close to $950 billion worth of phones and related equipment from China over the past quarter-century, most of them smartphones in more recent years. Annual phone imports from China peaked in 2017 to a record $72 billion and have slid significantly since then, to $30 billion in 2025.
That has coincided with a drop in China’s share of the U.S. import market for phones — which peaked at 65 percent in 2018 but slid to just 21 percent last year.
Suppliers from other countries are filling the gap. The U.S. imported a record $142 billion worth of phones and equipment in 2025, with Vietnam grabbing about 22 percent of the market, India 17 percent and Thailand 13 percent.
Phone imports from India were especially notable, since they nearly tripled to $25 billion from the previous year, with smartphones driving most of that surge. Smartphones from India captured 42 percent of the U.S. smartphone import market.
Fortunately for New Delhi, Trump exempted smartphones from the additional 25 percent tariff that he temporarily imposed on India because of its purchases of Russian oil, as well as from the reciprocal tariffs he imposed on nearly every country in August.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, in a Fox Business interview last week, praised India as a manufacturing substitute for China, at least temporarily, as the U.S. tries to increase its own output of key goods.
“The American worker is first, but certainly to the extent we’re going to import from other countries, India can be a good source, as long as it’s balanced and it’s fair,” he said.
Computers: Although Trump exempted computers, smartphones, semiconductors and certain other electronics from his “reciprocal” tariffs announced in early April, he did not exempt those goods from a separate 20 percent fentanyl-related tariff he imposed on China in early 2025, which the administration reduced to 10 percent in November. That duty was also struck down by the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday.
The higher rates, as well as companies’ longer-term efforts to diversify their operations away from China, resulted in a significant decline in U.S. imports of computers and accessories.
The share of those imports coming from China dropped a staggering amount, from 26 percent in 2024 to just 4 percent in 2025. That represented a dollar value of around $11 billion in imports last year, less than a third of what the U.S. imported the year before. In 2021, the U.S. imported a record-high of $61 billion of the same Chinese-made computing equipment.
Despite China’s decrease in computer exports to the U.S., the U.S. imported more computing equipment than ever: $251 billion in 2025, up from $140 billion the prior year.
Imports from Taiwan went from $26 billion in 2024 to more than $85 billion last year. Mexico also saw its imports of this equipment nearly double to $90 billion, while imports from Vietnam and Thailand also surged.
Those sharp increases have raised questions about whether the products are being locally produced or are actually manufactured in China and transhipped through the other countries — a practice the Trump administration is trying to crack down on. “That’s very much an unknown,” Sonola said.
Toys, games and sports equipment: China historically dominated the U.S. market for imports of these items, cresting 80 percent a decade ago. The value of these imports fell sharply last year to less than $19 billion, compared to $30 billion in 2024. That dropped the share of U.S. imports from China to 53 percent in 2025. In particular, imports of video game consoles from China saw one of the largest market share drops since Trump’s tariffs took effect – from 86 percent of U.S. imports to about one-quarter last year.
Clothing and footwear: Imports of clothing items, footwear and textiles dropped from almost $36 billion in 2024 to $24 billion in 2025, making up only about 20 percent of the U.S. import market for these products last year. A decade ago, these items made up 42 percent import share.
Plastics: China’s share of the U.S. import market for plastics continued to slide in 2025, down about 5 percentage points to 21 percent last year. With almost $15 billion worth of imports, China remained the largest player in the U.S. market for plastic products, ahead of Canada, Mexico and Vietnam.
Other electronic equipment: Among the consumer electronics and machinery that comprise a notable share of Chinese imports, some of the biggest drops came from video monitors and sound equipment, such as speakers and microphones. Combined, those categories saw a drop from $12 billion to $6 billion of U.S. imports. Other imports from China, like electric heaters and electric storage batteries, also saw reductions in their share of the U.S. market.
Furniture and lights: U.S. imports of furniture, lights and bedding from China saw a sharper decline than in previous years, hitting $12.6 billion in 2025 compared to $18.5 billion the prior year. Vietnam has gained the most from China’s declining market share, followed by Mexico.
Pharmaceuticals: The U.S. imported about $5.4 billion worth of pharmaceutical products from China in 2025, down from nearly $8 billion the year prior. China accounted for less than 3 percent of all U.S. pharmaceutical imports.
