A trade war usually goes like this: one country imposes tariffs, essentially taxing products that come from another country. Then the other retaliates with tariffs on goods from the initiating country.
That’s exactly what happened between the U.S. and China after the Trump Administration announced a 10% tariff on goods from China. China imposed retaliatory measures, including a 15% tariff on American coal and liquified natural-gas products as well as a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery, and large-engine cars. These retaliatory tariffs could make it more difficult for certain U.S. manufacturers to export products to China because the products will cost more for the Chinese companies buying them.
China’s retaliatory tariffs, which go into effect Feb. 10, are most likely to hurt small towns in states like North Dakota, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia—in short, some of the communities that voted for President Donald J. Trump, according to a new analysis by the Brookings Institution.
“These global face-offs have very local side effects,” says Mark Muro, senior fellow at Brookings Metro and one of the authors of the study.
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Though the places likely to see the most jobs affected are in populated cities like Houston and Detroit, the communities that could feel the biggest sting from the tariffs are in rural areas where affected industries make up a large share of the local economy. In Sargent County, N.D., only about 1,600 jobs could be affected, the Brookings paper found, but those jobs make up about 59% of the overall employment market. Other counties which may have a small number of jobs but a big share of potentially affected companies include Gibson County, Ind.; Noble County, Ohio; and Irion County, Tex.
Overall, the paper found, nearly two-thirds of jobs potentially affected by the retaliatory tariffs are in counties that voted for Trump in the 2024 election. This is a stark contrast to the Chinese retaliatory tariffs enacted in 2018, during the first Trump Administration, which were more broad-based and affected both blue and red counties.
The Brookings study estimates that there are between 400,000 to 700,000 U.S. jobs that could be affected by the retaliatory tariffs. They’re at car and truck companies, petroleum companies, and firms that make construction equipment, to name a few. “If a factory has to downsize, that could have a significant impact on local employment,” says Rob Maxim, a co-author of the Brookings study.
Separate research from January 2024 found that the 2018-2019 trade war also had negative economic impacts on Republican-leaning areas, including the lower Mississippi Valley, Midwestern industrial states like Ohio and Indiana, and manufacturing-oriented Southern states like North Carolina. But Trump didn’t pay a price for the pain the trade skirmish created. In fact, the research found, residents of regions affected by tariffs actually became less likely to identify as Democrats and more likely to vote for Trump in 2020. “Although the goal of bringing back jobs to the heartland remained elusive, voters in regions that had borne the economic brunt of Chinese import competition in the 1990s and 2000s were particularly likely to reward the Trump government for its tariff policy,” that paper concluded.
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The same could happen for the regions affected by the 2025 retaliatory tariffs from China, says Brookings’ Maxim. “A big part of the appeal for Trump, in some smaller communities, is that he’s doing something.”
West Virginia is a case in point. The U.S. does not export a large amount of coal, but nearly half of it comes from the state. Local coal miners could therefore be significantly affected by the Chinese retaliatory tariffs, says Chris Hamilton, president of the West Virginia Coal Association.
But that will not sway the association’s support for President Trump, Hamilton said. The Trump Administration has long pledged to reverse Democratic policies that seek to wean the U.S. power grid off of coal, and Hamilton is anticipating that this will lead to job growth in the industry. “We’re all in and supportive of President Trump,” he tells TIME. Even when his trade war has consequences.
