From tariffs to tolerance: Why Americans are reassessing China

Editor's note: Adriel Kasonta, a special commentator for CGTN, is a London-based foreign affairs analyst and commentator. He is the founder of AK Consultancy and former chairman of the International Affairs Committee at Bow Group, the oldest conservative think tank in the UK. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

According to Pew Research Center's March 23-29 survey, 27% of Americans now hold a favorable view of China, up 6 percentage points from last year and nearly double the level recorded in 2023. The number is still modest, but its direction matters: After years of entrenched negativity, even a small rebound suggests that some Americans are reassessing China less through a geopolitical lens than through the daily pressures of prices, jobs and purchasing power.

Tariffs sounded tough. On the checkout line, looked more like a tax

Washington's tariff regime was sold as a show of strength: a way to rebalance trade, protect American industry and push back against China's rise. In practice, the evidence increasingly points the other way. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that US consumers of imported goods bore the brunt of the 2018-2019 trade war through higher prices, while the broader economy saw losses in real income on both sides of the Pacific. The same research estimated tariffs on roughly $283 billion of US imports during 2018, with rates ranging from 10% to 50%.

For ordinary households, tariffs do not remain an abstract policy tool. They show up in the price of clothing, electronics, appliances, furniture and countless everyday goods. For small and medium-sized enterprises – the importers, retailers, builders and distributors that keep local economies moving – they become a direct squeeze on margins. A small hardware store in the Midwest or a family-run construction supplier in the South does not operate with the flexibility of a multinational. When input costs rise, there is little room to maneuver except to raise prices or absorb losses.

Layered on top of this is the broader inflation shock that has defined the post-pandemic period. Even as headline inflation cooled from its 2022 peak, the cumulative rise in prices since 2021 has left a lasting imprint on household budgets. Many categories of consumer goods remain significantly more expensive than they were just a few years ago. In such an environment, even modest policy-driven cost increases are felt sharply and repeatedly, not as isolated economic data points but as weekly realities at supermarkets, fuel stations and online checkouts.

Decoupling promised resilience, but delivered friction

The slogan of "decoupling" sounds neat in a speech. In the real economy, it is messy, expensive and slow. Companies cannot reroute global supply chains overnight without paying more for logistics, labor, compliance and inventory. That is especially true for smaller firms, which rarely have the bargaining power or capital cushion to absorb shocks the way multinationals can.

Efforts to shift production away from China have also revealed a structural constraint: scale. China's manufacturing ecosystem is not just a matter of factories, but of integrated supply chains, supplier density and infrastructure built over decades. Replicating that elsewhere requires time horizons that extend well beyond electoral cycles. In the interim, firms often end up paying more for less efficient alternatives, or maintaining partial reliance on Chinese inputs while publicly committing to diversification.

Technology restrictions follow a similar pattern. Export controls on advanced semiconductors and related equipment may slow certain capabilities, but they also introduce friction into globalized industries in which American firms remain deeply embedded. The result is not clean separation, but complex interdependence with higher compliance costs and reduced predictability.

The politics of costs versus the reality competition

Over time, these pressures accumulate into something politically consequential. The average American does not experience trade policy as a strategic doctrine. They experience it as a series of price changes, product shortages, delayed deliveries and shifting job prospects. The language of "strategic competition" in Washington increasingly collides with the language of household economics elsewhere in the country.

This is where the Pew data becomes more than just a snapshot of sentiment. The gradual improvement in views of China does not reflect a sudden ideological shift. It reflects a more grounded recalibration: a recognition that years of maximum pressure have not fundamentally altered China's development trajectory, but have produced tangible costs at home. In that gap between expectation and outcome, skepticism grows. At the same time, it would be misleading to suggest a broad public embrace of China. American opinion remains cautious, shaped by concerns over security, technology and global influence.

A quiet recalibration in public mood

What emerges from the Pew survey is not a dramatic pivot, but a subtle correction. After years of steadily worsening perceptions, even a modest rebound suggests that public sentiment is no longer moving in one direction. Instead, it is becoming more conditional, more cost-sensitive and more willing to question whether hardline approaches deliver proportional benefits.

For policymakers, this creates a narrowing space between political rhetoric and economic reality. Industrial policy, tariffs and technological restrictions are unlikely to disappear. But their legitimacy in the public mind may depend increasingly on whether they can demonstrate visible, positive outcomes in everyday life.

In that sense, the story is not simply about China. It is about the feedback loop between geopolitics and economics inside the United States itself. When strategic ambition collides with lived experience, public opinion does not always choose ideology. Increasingly, it chooses the grocery bill.

And that is where the recalibration begins.

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