Among the $308.37 billion in goods that the United States imported from the People's Republic of China in 2025, the No. 1 category was described by the Census Bureau as "cell phones and other household goods." Americans last year purchased $39,246,893,116 worth of these items manufactured in that communist regime.

Not surprisingly, Tim Cook, the chief executive officer of Apple, is one of the corporate executives who joined President Donald Trump on his latest trip to China. As The New York Times reported last June, "an estimated 80 percent of iPhones are still made in China. Apple's business is still so dependent on China that the tech giant can't operate without it."

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg also joined Trump on his trip to China. "China is considering a deal for about 500 of the 737 Max jets," Bloomberg reported.

Another top executive who joined Trump on his trip to China is Dina Powell McCormick, the president of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. "China on Monday blocked U.S. tech giant Meta's acquisition of the artificial intelligence startup Manus, in an unexpected move to reverse a deal that apparently aroused Beijing's concerns about the transfer of advanced technology," The Associated Press reported on April 27.

Yet another CEO on the China trip with Trump is Mastercard's Michael Miebach. "Mastercard today announced a collaboration between Mastercard Move, its money movement platform, and Bank of Shanghai (BoS) to enable seamless, bi-directional payment flows between China and global markets," said a press release Mastercard published on March 12.

"'With this collaboration, we're extending our multi-rail capabilities across cards, digital wallets and bank accounts to give banks and payment service providers across the world a single, trusted platform to send funds to China,'" the release quoted Mastercard's global head of transfer solutions as saying.

Sending money to China has become a sad feature of the American economy.

In just the last 10 years (2016-25), according to Census Bureau data, the United States has purchased $4.205 trillion in imports from the People's Republic. At the same time, China has purchased only $1.299 trillion in imports from the United States. The result is a cumulative 10-year trade deficit of $2.906 trillion.

After the $39,246,893,116 worth of "cell phones and other household goods" that Americans imported from Communist China in 2025 came "electric apparatus" ($21,306,822,050); "toys, games, and sporting goods" ($19,363,103,443); "apparel, textiles, nonwool or cotton" ($13,966,192,283); "other parts and accessories of vehicles" ($11,715,964,462); "computer accessories" ($11,659,017,578); "industrial machines" ($10,741,628,802); "household appliances" ($10,401,576,154); "telecommunications equipment" ($9,965,181,940); and "computers" ($9,715,440,762).

The day before he departed for China, Trump posted a message about the trip on Truth Social. "I am very much looking forward to my trip to China, an amazing Country, with a Leader, President Xi, respected by all," Trump said.

But Trump's own administration has issued reports condemning the actions of Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping's regime.

On Dec. 14, 2022, then-Sen. Marco Rubio testified before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom about China's egregious violations of that freedom.

"The Chinese Communist Party has been attacking religious freedom since its founding a century ago," Rubio said. "Oppression is frankly in its DNA.

"Today," Rubio said, "Beijing's assault is more violent and systematic than ever. In Xinjiang, it has even amounted to genocide. Party agents are also targeting ethnic Chinese believers here in in the United States because they believe faith undermines the legitimacy of the Communist Party. This is a threat to American national security and basic human rights. We must do everything we can to counter this."

Last August, as this column has noted before, Rubio's State Department repeated these claims in its human rights report on the PRC. It cited China for "(g)enocide and crimes against humanity" "serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom," "restrictions on religious freedom," "coerced abortions and forced sterilizations" and "trafficking in persons including forced labor."

In March, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called on the U.S. government to redesignate "China as a 'country of particular concern,' or CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom."

"In 2025," said the report, "China perpetuated particularly severe violations of religious freedom. Chinese authorities sought to exert complete control over religion through an extensive web of laws, regulations, and policies that do not conform to international human rights standards."

"Authorities continued to pursue the state's coercive 'sinicization of religion' policy, which seeks to integrate the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) political ideology into every aspect of religious life and forcibly assimilate ethnic minorities, including through co-opting or prohibiting their unique religious traditions and destroying or modifying their houses of worship," said the report.

Xi is not respected by all and should be respected by no one. Nor should his regime be allowed to make trillions of dollars from trade with the United States.

To find out more about Terence P. Jeffrey and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: zhang kaiyv at Unsplash