The United States and China may have agreed to slash tariffs on each other’s goods for ninety days—after sending global markets into a tailspin—but with their trade war clearly far from over, renewed economic escalation looks possible at any given moment. However, that’s not necessarily bad news for everyone. The confrontation between the United States and China opens up a lot of opportunities for Russia—though the Kremlin may struggle to capitalize on them.
Russia and the United States export a lot of the same goods to China: chiefly oil, gas, and coal. In 2024, the United States sold 10.8 million tons of oil, 4.16 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and 14.1 million tons of coal to China (in total, U.S. energy exports were worth about $15 billion). However, all this trade became pointless in February when both sides introduced tariffs. Unsurprisingly, the Russian Foreign Ministry has already said it can make up China’s lost U.S. volumes. If that were to happen, China would end up importing about 21.6 percent of its oil from Russia (up from 19.6 percent), 31.6 percent of its gas (up from 28.3 percent), and 19.8 percent of its coal (up from 17.2 percent). If prices do not change, that would generate an extra $14.7 billion for Russia’s coffers.
However, replacing the United States wholesale in this fashion would be no mean feat for Russia. China wants to diversify its imports as much as possible, and allowing Russia to supply over 30 percent of its gas and 20 percent of its oil would be far from ideal. Not only is Beijing currently cultivating ties with a variety of energy exporters, from Kazakhstan to Australia, it’s also investing heavily in renewable energy, which reduces its overall dependence on fossil fuel imports.
Even if China did want to increase energy imports from Russia, there are infrastructure constraints. Land routes for the delivery of oil are almost at capacity (they carried 41 million tons in 2024), meaning the only option would be seaborne routes. More could be shipped via these routes by moving more crude between tankers in the open sea (something that already happens in Malaysian and Singaporean waters with oil from the Russian Arctic). At the moment, this is not very profitable for Moscow, but when Russian tankers can use the Northern Sea Route in the summer months, it could generate more cash.
It will be harder for Russia to replace U.S. natural gas supplies. The volume of gas delivered to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline cannot be drastically altered because it’s specified in contracts, and rail deliveries are limited by the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Moscow and Beijing could restart negotiations over Power of Siberia 2 pipeline via Mongolia, but the major obstacle to this project remains: China does not need gas in the depressed northern areas of the country (where it also has the option of importing Turkmen and Kazakh gas), but in its heavily populated southern regions.
Western sanctions, the problems of navigating the Arctic in winter, and the size of Russia’s tanker fleet mean it would also be a challenge for Moscow to increase supplies of LNG. Admittedly, Moscow could overcome some of these problems—but it would take time, and for the moment, it’s easier for China to buy from the Middle East, Australia, or Myanmar.
The situation is similarly challenging when it comes to Russian coal. The main limitations in this respect are falling prices, long distances to consumers, and the capacity of Russian ports and railways.
Where China’s agricultural imports are concerned, the United States is significantly ahead of Russia, exporting $27 billion worth of produce in 2024 (primarily soy, corn, and wheat) compared with Russia’s $7.4 billion (rapeseed and sunflower oil, barley, and soy). But in agriculture, Russia is unlikely to replace U.S. imports to China due to geographical, transport, and phytosanitary restrictions, among other reasons.
The main problem is that the short growing season and frequent frosts of the Far East and Siberia mean the regions simply cannot compete with American yields. Even if they could, the produce could not be delivered due to capacity limitations, both of railway crossings on the border with China and Russia’s Far East seaport grain terminals. All of this makes Russian agricultural produce less attractive to Chinese importers, especially in competition with Brazil or Kazakhstan, which have no such problems and are likely to become the main beneficiaries of the trade war.
Alongside a loss of imports, another major consequence of the U.S.-China trade war is that Chinese goods have been deprived of a major market. At least on paper, items once manufactured in China that were destined for the United States could be redirected to Russia—with a lower price tag.
However, Russia is unlikely to become the main channel for selling excess Chinese goods. Firstly, it does not have sufficient market capacity. Secondly, a lack of production capacity and labor shortages mean Russia has limited scope to process Chinese goods for reexport. And thirdly, the risk of U.S. secondary sanctions means most Chinese banks refuse to work with Russian clients, forcing the latter to use third-party schemes that increase the cost and timeframe.
As of summer 2024, according to Reuters, 98 percent of Chinese banks had stopped accepting direct payments from Russian companies, and average payment processing times had risen to eighteen days. However, a collapse of U.S.-China trade would mean Chinese banks stop caring about U.S. sanctions, while Chinese regulators might be more willing to ignore financial workarounds, enabling more Chinese banks to fund deals involving Russian firms. While all of this is possible, it will only come to pass if Beijing signals to its banks that attempts to reach an agreement with Washington have failed, and that the trade war is likely to continue for a long time.
Even if China decides not to ramp up trade with Russia immediately, a protracted trade war means it remains an option in the future. To a large extent, the foundation of warming ties between Moscow and Beijing over the last thirty years has been the supply of Russian natural resources to China via routes that cannot be reached by jets launched from U.S. aircraft carriers. With the fracturing of the Washington-Beijing relationship, this is more pressing than ever.
While the economic benefits to Russia of the U.S.-China trade war may be somewhat ambiguous, the picture is much clearer when it comes to politics. The worse the relationship between the United States and China, the more important Russia becomes to China. In recent years, the bilateral relationship between Moscow and Beijing has become asymmetrical, with most of the power held by Beijing. But Russia will now be able to seek to correct that imbalance a little.
The trade war is also only one aspect of Washington’s broader strategy when it comes to Beijing. Tariffs and other restrictions on China are seen by U.S. officials not just as a way to correct the trade imbalance between the two countries, but also a means of hindering China’s technological progress. Every step in this direction by Washington makes Moscow a more attractive partner for Beijing.
In the long term, the trade war could also end up changing attitudes toward Russia in other countries, too. Washington’s approach is a break with the U.S. tradition of seeking values-based coalitions. Instead, whether or not a country enjoys Washington’s favor now depends on how many U.S. goods it buys, and whether it is prepared to endure public humiliation by President Donald Trump.
This model fits well with the Kremlin’s cynical foreign policy narratives in which the strong always defeat the weak, and every state seeks to dominate as many other nations as possible. And it means that the war between Russia and Ukraine looks less and less like a standoff between an isolated aggressor and a democratic coalition, and more like just another struggle for hegemony. In that case, for other countries it looks better to ignore the conflict and continue to trade with both sides.
For now, Trump and his policies continue to be perceived by many as an anomaly. And even if the Geneva tariff agreement ends up lasting longer than the planned ninety days and the trade war subsides to some extent, the consequences of some of Trump’s decisions will be hard to reverse. It seems inevitable that trust between Russia and China will grow, that Beijing will become less bothered about Western sanctions, that Russian companies will gain new markets, and that the countries of the Global South will rethink the way they see both Moscow and the war in Ukraine.
