The China–United States trade war begins when President Donald Trump places tariffs on Chinese solar panels and washing machines.

An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when US president Donald Trump began imposing tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the aim of forcing it to make changes to what the US has said are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft. The first Trump administration stated that these practices may contribute to the US–China trade deficit, and that the Chinese government requires the transfer of American technology to China. In response to the trade measures, CCP general secretary Xi Jinping's administration accused the Trump administration of engaging in nationalist protectionism and took retaliatory action. Following the trade war's escalation through 2019, the two sides reached a tense phase-one agreement in January 2020. However, because of a temporary collapse in goods trade around the globe during the COVID-19 pandemic together with a short recession diminished the chance of meeting the target, China failed to buy the $200 billion worth of additional imports specified. By the end of Trump's first presidency, the trade war was widely characterized by American media outlets as a failure for the United States.