Section 301 Back to Center Before Trump-Xi Summit

Posted 5/8/26

The Trump-Xi summit opens with Section 301 again at the center of U.S.-China trade leverage. USTR is moving on two fronts: preserving the 2018 China tariffs through a new four-year review while testing whether “structural excess capacity” can support a broader generation of tariffs against China and other manufacturing economies. Beijing’s pushback is therefore not a narrow objection to one probe; it is an effort to prevent Washington from rebuilding tariff leverage after court rulings weakened Trump’s emergency-tariff tools. For importers, the risk is that a fragile trade truce may coexist with a more durable Section 301 architecture aimed at Chinese industrial policy, third-country sourcing and strategic manufacturing sectors.

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