Watch: China Hit By Worker Protests Over Unpaid Wages, Factory Shutdowns Amid Trump Tariffs

President Donald Trump’s hard-hitting tariffs on China appear to be taking a toll, disrupting Chinese factories and sparking worker protests over unpaid wages.

As we noted late last month based on reporting by the Financial Times, factories across all of China have begun shutting down and furloughing workers "as the trade war unleashed by US President Donald Trump dries up orders for products ranging from jeans to home appliances."

With most Chinese goods now facing US duties of at least 145%, or simply lacking the raw materials needed to process goods and sent them onward to the US, Chinese factory owners told the FT that American customers have cancelled or suspended orders, forcing them to cut production.

With about 15% of all Chinese exports last year going to the US...

... and with China increasingly transshipping billions of goods to the US using such (formerly) untariffed venues such as Vietnam... 

.... it is not all surprising that as China's largest trading partner halts most imports, pain would be pervasive. And it is: in interviews with the Financial Times and via dozens of social media posts, workers shared pictures of quiet production lines or factory suspension notices, highlighting how the tariffs are starting to bite.

Now, according to Radio Free Asia, protests are erupting across China - from Hunan’s Dao County to Sichuan’s Suining City and Inner Mongolia’s Tongliao. Hundreds of enraged workers are storming the streets, blasting unpaid wages and wrongful firings as factories collapse under the crushing force of President Trump’s relentless U.S. tariffs, the news outlet said.

One video shared to X showed angry workers shouting “Strike! Strike!” while protesting outside the Shangda Electronics’ factory in Suining city on Sunday.

Radio Free Asia also reported:

Last week, on April 24, hundreds of workers of Guangxin Sports Goods in Dao county went on strike after the company’s factory was shut down without paying employees their compensation or their social security benefits.Workers at the company’s factory, which produces sports protective gear and related accessories, said Guangxin Sports unfairly dismissed more than 100 female employees, aged over 50 years, in September 2024 on the grounds of “reaching retirement age,” without paying them their wages or guiding them on retirement procedures.

When Radio Free Asia contacted Guangxin for a comment, a male employee at the company immediately hung up the phone on hearing the word “reporter.” The Dao County Labor and Social Security Bureau told RFA that “Guangxin still has dozens of employees operating.”Elsewhere in Inner Mongolia, many construction workers gathered on the rooftops of Jincan Royal Garden Community in Tongliao city on April 25 where they threatened to jump off the building if they were not paid the back wages they were due, another video posted on the same X account showed.

Of note, Goldman Sachs warned last month that Trump’s tariffs put roughly 16 million jobs in China at risk, saying that the increases will “significantly weigh on the Chinese economy.” In April, China’s manufacturing activity plunged more than expected to a 16-month low, entering into contractionary territory, with the official purchasing managers’ index sinking to 49.0. “The sharp drop in the PMIs likely overstates the impact of tariffs due to negative sentiment effects, but it still suggests that China’s economy is coming under pressure as external demand cools,” said Zichun Huang, China economist at Capital Economics, wrote.

After Trump shocked the world by imposing a 145% tariff on Chinese imports, Beijing countered with 125% duties on U.S. goods. Trump claims negotiations with Chinese officials are underway, but China’s Foreign Ministry has rejected these assertions, dismissing them as “unfounded.” The White House has defended the tariffs as a necessary measure to protect U.S. workers and address China’s trade practices, though economists warn of rising consumer prices and potential economic disruptions. Bloomberg News reported this week that China has quietly lifted $40 billion in retaliatory tariffs on 131 U.S. import items, including pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals.

In a Sunday interview with Fox News, Trump said that he will not lower tariffs on China to entice Beijing to negotiate.

"They said today they want to talk. Look, China, and I don't like this. I'm not happy about this. China's getting killed right now," Trump told host NBC's "Meet The Press" host Kristen Welker. "They're getting absolutely destroyed. Their factories are closing. Their unemployment is going through the roof. I'm not looking to do that to China now. At the same time, I'm not looking to have China make hundreds of billions of dollars and build more ships and more Army tanks and more airplanes."

"You're not dropping the tariffs against China to get them to the negotiating table?" Welker asked.

"No,” the president replied.