As the trade war between the world’s two largest economies drags on, the impact is already showing: China’s exports to the United States were down 15.5 per cent year on year in the first eight months of 2025.
But US tariffs are not affecting China equally. The country is made up of more than 30 provincial-level regions, and there is a wide divergence between these areas both in terms of their exposure to the US market and the effect of the trade war.
Some provinces have recorded steep drops in US exports; others have continued to see shipments soar – in some cases by as much as 265 per cent.
This explainer provides a regional-level overview of China’s response to US tariffs – showing which regions are most vulnerable and how local governments and companies are adapting. It is based on calculations and research by economists at CIB Research, a research institute affiliated with the Fujian-based Industrial Bank.
Which regions have the highest exposure to the US market?
China’s export hubs on the country’s eastern coastline dominate trade with the United States. Six coastal regions – Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Shandong, and Fujian – together accounted for nearly 80 per cent of China’s exports to the US in value terms during the first seven months of 2025, according to CIB Research.
Following them are a group of landlocked provinces in central and western China: Sichuan, Anhui, Hubei, Henan, and Chongqi, whichng combined accounted for about 10.8 per cent of the country’s US-bound shipments.
But the sheer volume of exports only tells part of the story. It is a different picture when looking at each region’s exposure to the US market in terms of local exporters’ dependence on US-bound shipments.
Despite not being a major export hub, the northern Shanxi province is actually the most reliant on the American market: 22.5 per cent of the region’s exports go to the US.
Other provinces with a high dependence on US sales include Fujian and Sichuan, where US shipments account for 16.4 per cent and 14.6 per cent of the regions’ total exports, respectively. The national average is 11.8 per cent, CIB Research data showed.
How have different provinces’ US exports been affected since President Donald Trump’s return to office?
Some Chinese provinces recorded steep declines in US shipments in the first seven months of 2025. Yunnan saw exports plunge 71 per cent year on year, while Shanxi and Qinghai logged drops of 47.9 per cent and 39.8 per cent, respectively.
But several regions actually saw exports rise, including Hubei, Guangxi, Heilongjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Gansu. The Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region stood out, with the far-western region’s US shipments soaring by a remarkable 265 per cent year on year.
“The decline in US-bound exports across provinces is related to their dependence on the US market. Overall, regions that were more reliant on the US in 2024 saw relatively larger drops in 2025,” CIB Research analysts said in a note published on Wednesday.
Zhejiang province, however, managed to buck this trend. Despite being one of China’s biggest export powerhouses, the region managed to expand exports to emerging markets while only registering a 5.3 per cent decline in US shipments, as it continued to push cross-border e-commerce.
How are US tariffs affecting Chinese exporters in different sectors?
The regional-level data also provides some useful insights into how different industries in China are being affected by US tariffs.
Electromechanical products make up the bulk of most provinces’ exports to the US. While shipments of these goods to America have fallen this year, this has often been at least partly offset by an increase in exports to the rest of the world, CIB Research noted.
The data indicates that “most provinces have effectively cushioned the fall in US-bound electromechanical exports by expanding into other markets,” the analysts said, pointing to Southeast Asia, India, Germany and Japan as the main sources of growth.
But exporters in light industrial sectors such as furniture, toys and footwear have found it harder to diversify beyond the US market, with most provinces recording declines in exports in these three categories.
Fujian, a major hub for footwear exports with a high dependence on the US market, saw its shoe shipments to the US fall 23.8 per cent year on year in the first seven months of 2025, with overall exports also declining.
Meanwhile, the impact of Trump’s elimination of the “de minimis” exemption is becoming evident. The policy – which allowed low-value packages to enter the US tariff-free – had fuelled the growth of cross-border e-commerce platforms like Shein and Temu by enabling them to maintain low prices despite US tariffs.
Most provinces saw notable declines in exports of “special and unclassified” goods to the US, which mostly refers to low-value, simplified clearance items sold through cross-border e-commerce platforms, the note said.
Fujian, Sichuan, and Chongqing saw exports of these goods fall 55.3 per cent, 74.1 per cent, and 87.9 per cent year on year, respectively. But Hubei bucked the trend, with exports to the US in this category rising 354.9 per cent.
What else can we learn from the regional data?
CIB Research pointed to a notable shift in China’s consumer electronics sector, where US tariffs appear to be driving manufacturers to move “certain segments of the consumer electronics supply chain” from China to India and Southeast Asia.
Major export hubs – including Guangdong, Jiangsu, Henan, Sichuan, and Chongqing – are not only selling more devices to other markets such as Europe and Japan; they are also ramping up shipments of chips and other electronic components to emerging markets.
Henan saw exports of mobile phone parts to India surge more than 10-fold year on year, while shipments from Jiangsu nearly tripled. Chongqing and Anhui recorded massive increases in exports of chips to Vietnam, with shipments up more than 24-fold and 67-fold, respectively.
“Meanwhile, provinces that previously focused on electronics assembly and manufacturing are quickly adapting to the changing global supply chain, increasingly taking on production of intermediate electronic components,” CIB Research said.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping made progress on a TikTok deal and agreed to a face-to-face meeting as soon as next month in South Korea.
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👉 ByteDance will license the technology for this U.S. entity for 10 years.
👉 U.S. investors will control 80.1% of the U.S. operations - key players: Oracle, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, plus legacy U.S. stakeholders. ByteDance retains just under 20%.
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