BeijingChina has not imported US oil since May 2025, when a 20% tariff froze the trade.
Xi told Trump Beijing wants to resume purchases to reduce Hormuz exposure; the Iran war cut the strait’s traffic for months.
Any resumption requires removing the tariff; China’s state media made no mention of energy purchases in its summit readout.
Sources: Yahoo! Finance, India Today, TRT World
THE DEPENDENCY
Roughly half of China's crude imports transit the Strait of Hormuz — a single 33km-wide channel between Iran and Oman. No other major economy concentrates so much of its energy lifeline through one geographic chokepoint controlled by a power it doesn't command.
THE SPR ASYMMETRY
The US holds the world's largest Strategic Petroleum Reserve — roughly 360 million barrels in salt caverns along the Gulf Coast — built after the 1973 oil shock. China has been quietly building its own since 2007 but does not publish levels. Analysts estimate it covers 90 days of imports; the IEA standard is also 90, but only members are bound.
WHY US CRUDE
The US became the world's largest crude producer around 2018, surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia, on the back of shale. WTI is light and sweet — easy for Chinese refineries configured for medium grades to blend. The geography is the point: a tanker from Houston to Qingdao crosses no chokepoint China's adversaries can close.
THE TARIFF LOGIC
Energy commodities are unusual tariff targets — they raise costs for the importer without protecting a domestic industry, because oil is fungible globally. China's 20% tariff on US crude in 2025 was retaliatory signaling, not industrial policy. Removing it costs Beijing nothing economically; the cost is purely symbolic concession.
THE TANKER WAR PRECEDENT
From 1984 to 1988, Iran and Iraq attacked over 400 commercial ships in the Persian Gulf. Oil prices spiked briefly but markets adapted — tankers were reflagged under US and Kuwaiti flags and escorted by warships. The lesson Beijing's planners took: disruption is easier to threaten than to sustain, but the insurance premium spike alone reroutes trade for months.
THE BIGGER HEDGE
China's Hormuz hedge is multi-layered: Russian ESPO pipeline crude arriving via Kozmino on the Pacific, Central Asian pipelines from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that would land Gulf oil at Gwadar and pipe it overland to Xinjiang. US crude is the newest piece of an old strategy.