Outgoing US President Donald Trump claimed in the campaign and during his term that he would reduce Chinese imports and thus help the US economy. He didn’t succeed, quite the opposite.

According to CNN, China’s trade surplus reached $78 billion in December last year. The total trade surplus for 2020 then rose to a record $535 billion. This increased by 27 percent, an all-time record for Sino-US trade.

Paradoxically, the coronavirus helped China achieve this result. When the world’s second largest economy controls it at home, other countries fall into trouble. And while China has long thrived, other countries have fallen. Thanks to this, he was able to export the masks and other protective equipment needed urgently to fight the pandemic and the electronics needed to manage the headquarters successfully.

In this situation, the trade war is really bad, just like the US has. The trade deficit returned to 2018 levels, when Trump started a dispute with China and since then tariffs on Chinese goods in the US have started to increase.

Success did not come even when looking at the new jobs that were supposed to be created in the US due to restrictions on Chinese imports.

According to an Oxford Economics study interpreted by the Reuters news agency, on the contrary, the number of jobs decreased by 245 thousand during the trade war. The study’s projections show that if the trade war continues into 2022, the United States’ GDP will fall by $1.6 billion and the number of jobs will decrease by 730,000.

The Biden administration will probably continue this policy, but be less harsh, and in some respects it may also reduce or eliminate tariffs.

Reuters analysts expect China’s GDP to grow by 2.1 percent last year, while the world’s other major economies will report losses.