China now makes up a record 40% of all global container exports—and it’s a sign Trump’s tariffs meant to punish Chinese firms have fallen flat

China keeps growing its share of global cargo sales, indicating the Trump administration's tariffs meant to punish the country are instead an obstacle that China has successfully navigated.

China now accounts for 40% of the world's container exports on a rolling three-month basis, a 2.5% increase from nine months ago and its highest-ever levels, Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, told the Financial Times on Tuesday.

For Europe, China's swelling share of global shipments represents a growing trade imbalance between the continents, Eskelund warned. As more cheaper goods from China flood European markets, European manufacturers are squeezed out, and the continent loses out on global market share for exports and China sells its goods for cheap elsewhere.

The U.S. is facing a similar fate, harkening back to the "China Shock" of the early 2000s, representing a surge of Chinese products on American shelves following its entry into the World Trade Organization, throttling U.S. manufacturing and leaving pockets of America with massive job losses and stagnant wages. Economists predict the impending "China Shock 2.0" will extend beyond retail shelves to technology like AI infrastructure and electric vehicles.

"China really is becoming the workshop of the world," Jeremi Suri, a public affairs and history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told Fortune . "And what that means is that almost every global economy is one way or another dependent on China."

What's troubling to economists and policy experts is how the U.S. got here. While China's path to becoming a global export behemoth has been decades in the making, President Donald Trump's trade philosophy of inundating China with import taxes may be, in large part, to blame for this more recent shift.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet for a two-day summit beginning on Wednesday.

"The tariff policies of the last two years have been an unmitigated disaster," Suri said. "They have made exactly what we're talking about worse for the United States."

How did tariffs pave the way for China's growing container export share?

Part of China's rise to power in trades comes from a natural cycle. The U.S. began transitioning from a manufacturing economy to a service economy in the 1950s—and by the 1970s, China had meanwhile ended its isolationist policies like high tariffs and cemented its role in global trade when it joined the WTO 25 years ago. Buoyed by an undervalued currency , Chinese firms can charge up to 30% less than other countries to export goods, leading to a glut of production to be sold overseas.