Text | Meat floss and scallops
Edited |Shi Bu
The Chinese-American trade war went crazy, and the big tricks of both sides became bright: at the end of September, the United States brutally pressured Chinese enterprises, and on October 9, China returned to the "King Bang", and the United States pressured from president to minister.
Everyone is guessing whether the United States will come up with a "trick"?
Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao said that the United States has a "nuclear bomb-level" card to fight financial wars, such as catching Chinese companies out of the US capital market and kicking Bank of China out of SWIFT; Trump doesn't work well. If the talk collapses, he really may use this trick!
How important is SWIFT?
When it comes to cross-border transfers, many people have never heard of SWIFT, but it is an "invisible pillar" of global trade.
SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Banking and Financial Telecommunications), established in Belgium in 1973, is essentially a "courier" between banks.
It connects more than 200 countries, more than 10,000 financial institutions, and processes more than 40 million messages per day involving trillion-dollar transactions.
90% of enterprise import and export payments and cross-country funding exchanges have to be safely and quickly completed.
Without SWIFT, international transfers have to go back to the old way: bank fax, email communication, slow and easy to go wrong.
The impact on China is even greater.
As the world's second-largest economy, China's GDP exceeds $18 trillion, the trade volume accounts for 15% of the world, and the banking system is deeply bound to SWIFT, and big banks such as industrial banks and construction banks process large volumes of import and export money every day.
Once kicked out of SWIFT, Chinese enterprises cross-border receipts will instantly shell, trade efficiency drops sharply, and risks explode.
The United States has long regarded SWIFT as a "sanctions weapon."
In 2012, Iran was kicked out due to the nuclear issue. Oil export revenue halved, trade fell by 30%, the economy shrank by 6%, and inflation exceeded 30%.
After the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in 2022, the United States and the European Union kicked seven Russian banks out of SWIFT, Russian banks were unable to settle with the West, people were crazy, the ruble fell, the stock market collapsed, and the financial system risked to be paralyzed.
Now the Chinese-US trade war is hotter, the United States will not kick China out of SWIFT, became the biggest suspicion.
Seven-year tug-of-war between China and the United States
Since the Sino-US trade war started in 2018, it has been seven years since then, and the tricks have become more and more ruthless.
In 2018, the Trump administration took Section 301 as an argument and imposed a 25% tariff on $34 billion of Chinese goods. China immediately fought back and imposed the same tariff on American soybeans and automobiles.
In the past two years, the United States has covered tariffs to US $250 billion of Chinese goods, and China has countered US $110 billion of American products. In 2019, the trade volume between China and the United States dropped to US $541.2 billion, with China's exports falling by 4.8% and imports falling by 20.9%.
In 2020, the two sides signed a phase one agreement, the United States reduced some of the tariffs, and demanded that China buy $200 billion in U.S. goods, which could eventually allow the agreement to be implemented at a discount.
After Biden took office, he changed his approach: in 2021, he controlled semiconductor exports and allied friends banned Xinjiang cotton; in 2022, he pushed a chip bill to subsidize U.S. domestic chip production and restrict exports of advanced equipment to China, and China accelerated local chip research and development.
In 2023, the battlefield will shift to the fields of electric vehicles and batteries. The United States will increase tariffs and China will launch a countervailing investigation.
Although high-level officials met in San Francisco that year to resume military communication, the economic and trade issues remained unresolved, and the trade volume rose to 664.4 billion US dollars.
The conflict escalated in 2024. In March, the United States doubled tariffs to 20%, and China counterattacked U.S. agricultural products by adding 15%; in May, China adjusted the scope of tariffs, and the United States extended technology transfer restrictions. The annual trade volume rose to 688.3 billion yuan, a slight increase of 3.7%.
In October, the U.S. added 100 percent tariffs, China restricted rare earth and technology exports, and interim port charges with the U.S.
In March, the U.S. raised tariffs on all Chinese products to 20%, and in August, China's trade surplus was more than expected to reach $10.23 billion; on September 29, the U.S. Department of Commerce introduced a "killer-killer".
Subsidiaries of the parent company in the United States with a limited internal and foreign investment equity of more than 50% are automatically subject to sanctions.
This move is aimed at the cooperative investment model of China's high-tech enterprises. Anshi Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Wentai Technology, is to be included in the list. The Dutch government "snatched" the company away in order to avoid suspicion, shocking the global industry.
Faced with encirclement and suppression, China launched a "king's bombing" on October 9: it introduced 0.1% control rules for rare earth content to control superhard materials such as lithium batteries and diamond.
At the same time, China included 14 U.S. entities in the "list of unreliable entities" to investigate the anti-monopoly issues of Qualcomm's merger and acquisition case. Even five U.S. subsidiaries of Hanwha Ocean Co., Ltd., which assisted the United States, were countered.
The United States wants to increase the port fees of Chinese ships to take advantage of it. China backhand stipulates that "ships with American shareholders accounting for 25% or more will increase the fees", so that the United States will steal chickens without losing rice.
Will the US kick China out of SWIFT?
The United States sees China's strong counteraction, and takes the SWIFT threat, but really has to measure the consequences first.
First of all, SWIFT is not a "private tool" of the United States. Among the 25-member board of directors, the United States has only 2 seats, Europe has 17 seats, and China has 1 seat. Decisions need to be coordinated by multiple parties.
Europe and China have close economic and trade relations. Germany's exports to China exceed 100 billion euros. France relies on the China market for luxury goods. German Chancellor Scholz publicly stated that "SWIFT should remain technically neutral and not use it as a political tool" and will not cooperate with the United States.
Looking at the US's own losses, half of the U.S. supermarkets' goods are made in China, China is kicked out of SWIFT, the cost of U.S. imports will rise by 20-30%, the people will spend more money.
U.S. agricultural products, aircraft exports to China also rely on SWIFT, China is an important buyer of U.S. soybeans, honestly, American farmers do not promise.
Wall Street bankers are even more opposed to the fact that JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have hundreds of billions of dollars invested in China, spending $23 million in the first half of 2025 lobbying Congress, opposing extreme financial sanctions against China.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Yellen also warned that doing so "would seriously damage the international status of the US dollar".
More importantly, China is not Russia in 2022.
China has the world's largest manufacturing base, accounting for more than one-third of the world's share, by 2030 is expected to exceed 40%, and countries around the world from mobile phones to industrial equipment can not be separated from Chinese manufacturing.
After Russia was kicked out of SWIFT, Europe could still find the Middle East and the United States to buy energy alternatives, but China was kicked out. Don't countries use Made in China?
The German auto industry imports hundreds of billions of euros of parts and components from China every year, and Southeast Asian electronics factories rely on Chinese chips and raw materials. They will only accelerate their shift to local currency settlement or access China's CIPS, and will not go crazy with the United States.
If the United States really kicks China out of SWIFT, it will still face the risk of accelerating de-dollarization.
After the U.S. froze Russia’s $3250 billion assets in 2022, countries’ confidence in the U.S. dollar declined, and the share of global dollar reserves fell from 59% to 54% in 2022 and the RMB rose from 2.7% to 5.2% in 2025.
60% of the oil trade between India and China is settled in RMB and rupee, and the proportion of local currency settlement among ASEAN countries will increase from 12% in 2023 to 28% in 2025.
China is kicked, Russia's SPFS, the BRICS unified payment system and CIPS integration, forming a force that can counter SWIFT, the dollar hegemony will be jeopardized.
conclusion
Up to now, the Sino-US trade game is no longer a one-move victory stage. SWIFT, the "financial card", is a double-edged sword; the United States wants to tie China's neck, but it does not expect that China will be prepared early, let alone that global dissatisfaction with US dollar hegemony is growing.
The global economy has long existed among you, and cooperation is the right path. If the United States insists on politicizing financial instruments, it will eventually backfire on itself.
Source of information:
Lianhe Zaobao of Lianhe Zaobao: "Shen Zewei: Decoupling has become the norm for China and the United States to talk while fighting" 2025-10-16
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