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stated on December 13, 2023 in a town hall in Londonderry, New Hampshire:

Under the Trump administration's trade deal, “China's only fulfilled one-third of the promises of agricultural products that they were supposed to buy from our farmers.”

Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks to a voter after an town hall in Londonderry, New Hampshire, on Dec. 13, 2023 (Rebecca Catalanello/PolitiFact)

By Grace Abels December 19, 2023

By Louis Jacobson December 19, 2023

Christie’s claim on Trump’s China trade deal is on the right track, but hinges on the math

If Your Time is short

By conventional calculations, China met 83% of its commitment for agricultural purchases.
Christie offered an alternative calculation that doesn’t credit China for the level of purchases it was already making in 2017. This other calculation produces a result of about 40%, which is a bit higher than the one-third Christie cited.
Experts say that overall, China did not fulfill its commitments to buy U.S. goods and services, even though the rate was better for agricultural goods than it was for other categories.

See the sources for this fact-check

LONDONDERRY, N.H. — Republican presidential candidates on the 2024 campaign trail are unwaveringly critical of China, and often of U.S. policy toward the economic giant.

At a town hall in Londonderry, New Hampshire, presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie directed the discussion of China toward agriculture and trade, taking a shot at one of his campaign rivals, former President Donald Trump.

Christie told the audience that Trump "said he made the greatest trade deals with China, right? You've heard him brag about his trade deals. Do you know, on the agricultural trade deals that he made, China's only fulfilled one-third of the promises of agricultural products that they were supposed to buy from our farmers? One-third."

We examined the data and found that Christie’s math conflicts with the standard way these numbers are calculated. But his approach is reasonable.

China’s promises

In January 2020, about a year before he left the White House, Trump signed what he called a "historical trade deal" with China.

Under the agreement, China pledged to purchase $200 billion of additional U.S. exports before Dec. 31, 2021. The agreement was widely regarded as unsuccessful, partly because of the coronavirus pandemic, which struck within weeks and prompted a worldwide recession.

It was "a terrible agreement," said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Overall, calculations by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, show China bought about 58% of what it had pledged in 2020 and 2021, the two years that were officially part of the agreement.

China bought 37% of its promised amount in energy, 54% in services, and 59% in manufacturing.

However, China fared the best in the one remaining major sector — the one Christie cited in his town hall. In agriculture, China met 83% of its goal, which is far higher than the one-third Christie said.

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Within the agriculture sector, China’s progress varied, Peterson Institute for International Economics data shows. China bought more than it had promised of pork, corn, wheat and sorghum, a grain used heavily as livestock feed. It missed goals for soybeans; cotton; lobster; and raw hides and skins.

"Overall, China is way short of its promises, but for agricultural products it may be somewhat closer to the mark," said Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow with the Peterson Institute.

The agreement covered only two years, 2020 and 2021, but since the agreement ended, agricultural exports to China continued to climb, reaching $40.9 billion in 2022, a 14.5% increase from 2021, according to the Agriculture Department.

Christie’s calculation

Trade experts pointed PolitiFact to the standard calculations the Peterson Institute made. However, Christie’s campaign offered an alternative way of measuring the numbers.

The Peterson Institute’s calculation compared the total amount China promised to purchase with what it bought. Over the two years, it promised to buy $73.9 billion in exports and it bought $61.1 billion — or 83%.

Rather than looking at how much of the total commitment China met, Christie’s campaign measured how much China spent in 2020-21 beyond its 2017 levels.

Plugging the Peterson Institute data into the Christie campaign’s formula shows that the additional Chinese spending in 2020 and 2021 accounted for 40% of its commitment over 2017’s baseline level. That’s higher than one-third, but relatively close.

One note: Christie’s team used Chinese import data, rather than U.S. export data, so the numbers, for technical reasons, differ slightly from the export data used to calculate the 83%. For example, that same value, calculated with import data, shows China met 77% of its commitment. This difference does not account for the gap between 40% and Christie’s claim of "one-third," however.

Our ruling

Christie said that under Trump’s trade deal, "China's only fulfilled one-third of the promises of agricultural products that they were supposed to buy from our farmers."

By conventional calculations, China met 83% of its commitment for agricultural purchases. Christie offered an alternative calculation that doesn’t credit China for the purchases it was already making in 2017. This calculation produces a result of about 40%, which is higher than the one-third Christie cited.

Experts say that overall, China did not fulfill its commitments for buying U.S. goods and services, though the rate was better for agricultural goods than for other categories.

We rate the statement Half True.