Days after celebrating the publication in Science of a paper he co-authored on gene expression in mice, cell biologist Tang Fuchou of Peking University was whiplashed by the deepening trade war between China and the United States. Last week, citing new tariffs imposed by China on U.S. goods, Addgene, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit repository of circular DNA strands called plasmids, canceled a contract to supply them to Tang’s lab. His team would have to painstakingly construct plasmids itself, delaying a project by months. “It was really frustrating!” he says. Then on 21 April, Addgene agreed to sell Tang the plasmids after all—but at a hefty tariff-driven markup.
This month’s tit-for-tat escalation of tariffs between the world’s two biggest economies is afflicting researchers on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. For U.S. scientists, tariffs of 145% on most Chinese imports have meant far pricier reagents, glassware, and other lab essentials from the U.S.’s largest Asian trading partner. In China, elite scientists like Tang are suffering because China has responded to the U.S. moves with a tariff of 125% on all U.S. imports—including high-end instruments and specialty research materials that Chinese firms can’t easily supply.
“Tariffs indeed are having a big impact on research in China,” says Xiong Bo, a molecular biologist at Zhejiang University. “If this continues for a long time,” adds Fan Shaofeng, a research official at Peking, “it will be greatly detrimental to the development of global science.”
In 2024, China imported some $12.5 billion worth of precision instruments from the U.S., according to an 11 April article on the Chinese news site Toutiao. Top-of-the-line Hall effect measurement systems, which characterize electrical properties of materials and can cost tens of thousands of dollars, are one example. “It’s a critical instrument widely used in semiconductors research,” says Zhu Tiejun, a materials scientist at Zhejiang. A favored system in his department, from Ohio-based Lake Shore Cryotronics, is now subject to the 125% tariff, he says.
Genetics researchers face another hurdle: special trade restrictions the Chinese government has placed on Illumina, a prominent U.S. maker of gene sequencers. On 4 February, 3 days after the U.S. slapped a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports, China retaliated with reciprocal tariffs and placed Illumina on its blacklist of “unreliable entities,” alleging the California-based firm had engaged in unfair trade practices. A month later, China barred import of Illumina’s sequencers.
U.S. reagents and lab supplies that Chinese labs depend on have also been subject to steep markups and supply disruptions. Several major U.S. firms have simply stopped selling antibodies to China, says Chen Ye-Guang, a molecular biologist at Tsinghua University. And he says prices have shot up for U.S.-made restriction enzymes, stem cell–related products, and tissue culture products. “We are seeking replacements and hope that our experiments will not stop,” Chen says.
For high-end instruments, few substitutes are available, and Chinese researchers are finding ways to share what they have. According to Deng Huachun, a nanophotonics researcher at the Harbin Institute of Technology, “Some groups have begun using Chinese-made electron microscopes for preliminary experiments.” When gunning for publication-quality data they book time on top-of-the-line imports at centralized facilities.
China also has a buffer. Under its 2021–25 national science plan, China’s science ministry vowed to “establish emergency reserves for critical research supplies to ensure stable support for major national projects” and to invest in reagent manufacturing. That response was driven in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, when Chinese labs faced bottlenecks of supplies such as polymerase chain reaction enzymes and antibodies. As geopolitical tensions with the U.S. shot up, many Chinese universities and institutes created their own stockpiles of essential reagents and lab materials. The goal was “to reduce China’s dependence on imports that put research efforts at risk," notes Denis Simon, a China science policy expert at Duke University.
As Chinese scientific suppliers grow more sophisticated, they are closing the gap with overseas competitors. “Domestic reagent companies have been developing well in China in recent years,” Xiong says. The tariff war, he says, is bound to accelerate the trend.
China’s efforts to develop the high-end computer chips needed for artificial intelligence (AI) systems could also see a boost from U.S. export restrictions. In 2022, then-President Joe Biden’s administration banned sales of Nvidia’s top-of-the-line H100 AI chips to China. In response, Nvidia developed a less powerful H20 chip that didn’t violate the ban. But earlier this month, President Donald Trump’s administration also banned the sale of H20 chips to China.
For the moment, many Chinese firms and researchers have chip stockpiles “which can sustain near-term model training and deployment,” says Ray Wang, a Washington, D.C.–based analyst specializing in U.S.-Chinese high-tech competition. The longer term impact hinges partly on how quickly Huawei, China’s AI leader, improves the performance of its chips. Huawei’s Ascend 910C chip “has performance metrics close to H20,” Wang says, though Nvidia chips still have “significant software advantages” that will take time to match.
In the meantime, many Chinese scientists fear both they and their U.S. counterparts will suffer from a prolonged trade war. “The long-term costs to both nations’ research ecosystems could be profound,” Deng says.
More: https://www.science.org/content/article/china-trade-war-u-s-taking-toll-research-labs
