NEW YORK - The Chinese economy is more dependent on exports, making tariffs more potent, yet it’s less reliant on American markets and increasingly bent on self-sufficiency

Eight years ago, when a newly elected Donald Trump promised to apply the powers of the Oval Office to start a trade war with China, the target of his ire was widely viewed as a juggernaut. China was the indispensable factory floor to the world and a swiftly developing market for goods and services.

As Trump prepares for his second stint in the White House, he is vowing to intensify trade hostilities with China by imposing additional tariffs of 60% or more on all Chinese imports. He is pressuring a country that has been chastened by a powerful combination of overlapping forces: the calamitous end of a real estate investment binge, incalculable losses in the banking system, a local government debt crisis, flagging economic growth and chronically low prices — a potential harbinger of long-term stagnation.

Eight years ago, when a newly elected Donald Trump promised to apply the powers of the Oval Office to start a trade war with China, the target of his ire was widely viewed as a juggernaut. China was the indispensable factory floor to the world and a swiftly developing market for goods and services.

As Trump prepares for his second stint in the White House, he is vowing to intensify trade hostilities with China by imposing additional tariffs of 60% or more on all Chinese imports. He is pressuring a country that has been chastened by a powerful combination of overlapping forces: the calamitous end of a real estate investment binge, incalculable losses in the banking system, a local government debt crisis, flagging economic growth and chronically low prices — a potential harbinger of long-term stagnation.

The decline of fortunes at home has made Chinese companies especially focused on sales abroad. And that makes the country vulnerable to any threat to its export growth, a weakness that would enhance the expected pressure from the Trump administration as it plans to seek a deal that would increase Chinese purchases of American goods.

“The balance of power has certainly shifted in favor of the United States,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University who was previously the head of the China division at the International Monetary Fund. “The Chinese economy is not quite on the ropes, but it has been struggling for a while.”

Yet complicating factors beneath that widely shared assessment may strengthen China’s ability to endure whatever measures the incoming Trump administration may have in store.

Most immediately, the Chinese government possesses formidable resources to stoke the domestic economy. After long declining to loosen credit for fear of reviving investment in real estate, China’s central bank this year lowered borrowing costs for homeowners and businesses. On Friday, the government approved a $1.4 trillion rescue plan that would allow local governments to refinance existing debts at lower rates of interest.

At the same time, a government-led strategy to advance the nation’s industrial prowess has turned China into the dominant supplier of electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies. That gives Chinese companies a hold on rapidly growing markets for critical wares regardless of American tariffs. In an era of rising alarm over climate change, the world can either use Chinese-made gear to limit carbon emissions or shun Chinese industry. At least for now, it is struggling to do both.

China is less dependent on access to American markets than it was the last time Trump ratcheted up tariffs. The wave of American import duties imposed by the Trump administration, beginning in 2018 and continuing under the Biden administration, eventually covered some $400 billion in Chinese goods. Chinese factories in turn looked to Southeast Asia and Latin America for customers.

Over the past six years, China’s share of American imports has dropped to 13% from 20%, according to TS Lombard, an investment research firm in London, though some of that shift reflects goods that end up in the United States after being routed through countries like Mexico and Vietnam in order to avoid American tariffs.

As Europe has more recently added its own tariffs to Chinese-made electric vehicles, China has accelerated its push to expand sales in other regions.

“Beijing is using the Global South to offset the loss of market share to the West,” said Jie Yu, a senior research fellow at Chatham House in London.