On the PBD Podcast (26 Aug 2026), guest Roman Yampolskiy said the US has more economic trade with China than with any other country.

We rate that mostly-false, truth score 0.15: Census Bureau data for June 2026 puts China third at 6.6%, behind Mexico (17.0%) and Canada (12.9%).

The statistic was scaffolding for a bigger argument — that a US-China treaty on frontier AI is achievable because the two economies are already fused. That argument has real support. China led the US trading-partner table from roughly 2014/2015-2018 and again in 2020, and PIIE's August 2026 policy brief finds China's direct share of US imports fell 7 points from 2017-2024 while Chinese value added in US imports fell only 2, with Taiwan, Vietnam and Mexico absorbing the rerouting. On the 2025 goods deficit, China was still #1 at $202.07B, about $5B ahead of Mexi ...