The Archive
A decade of dispute, dated
Forty dated events from WTO accession to the January 2027 deadline — each with its text, its sources, and the glossary terms that explain it. Start where the war started, or with the chapter you lived through.
The prelude: 1979–2017
Four decades of opening — the context the war interrupted.
Diplomatic Relations Normalized
The United States and the People's Republic of China establish formal diplomatic relations, ending three decades of non-recognition. Commercial ties, negligible in 1978, begin a four-decade expansion that would make this one of the largest bilateral trade relationships in world history.
US–China Trade Agreement Signed
Washington and Beijing sign the first bilateral trade agreement of the normalization era, granting each other most-favoured-nation treatment and creating the legal scaffolding for the trade relationship. Total bilateral goods trade that year was under $5 billion.
Bilateral WTO Accession Deal
After thirteen years of negotiation, the U.S. and China conclude a bilateral agreement clearing China's path to World Trade Organization membership. U.S. negotiators secure market-access commitments across agriculture, services and industry in exchange for supporting accession.
PNTR Signed into U.S. Law
President Clinton signs permanent normal trade relations legislation, ending the annual renewal ritual for China's trade status and locking in the terms of China's coming WTO entry for U.S. firms. The vote in Congress was among the most consequential trade votes of the post-war era.
China Joins the WTO
China formally accedes to the World Trade Organization. Over the following decade Chinese exports to the United States more than quadruple, and China becomes the largest source of U.S. goods imports by 2007 — the backdrop against which every later dispute unfolded.
Rare Earths Dispute Filed at the WTO
The United States, joined by the EU and Japan, challenges China's export restrictions on rare-earth minerals at the WTO — an early preview of the critical-minerals leverage that would define the trade war a decade later. China lost the case and removed the quotas in 2015, but the precedent stuck.
Section 301 Investigation Opened
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer initiates an investigation into China's technology-transfer, intellectual-property and innovation practices under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — the legal instrument that would carry most of the tariffs to come.