ANALYSIS | The U.S.-China trade war is escalating. But China may have more leverage than the U.S. thought | CBC News

As the trade war between the U.S. and China escalates, the biggest questions are which side has more leverage and which is willing to tolerate more pain.

China exported more than $400 billion US to the United States last year, much more than American companies sold to China. That's why the Trump administration claims it has all the leverage.

"The ball is in China's court. China needs to make a deal with us. We don't have to make a deal with them," said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday.

"China wants what we have; every country wants what we have: the American consumer. Or to put it another way, they need our money," she told reporters in Washington.

But the trade landscape is more complicated than that. And experts say China believes it can both inflict more damage on the U.S. and tolerate more pain from a tariff war.

"China does have a lot of cards to play. It has a lot of leverage," said Jia Wang, a senior fellow at the China Institute at the University of Alberta.