<p>As a trade conflict between the two biggest economies in the contemporary world, the U.S.-China trade war is significantly impacting a wide range of areas involving several actors. However, few studies have paid attention to the strategic behaviors of subnational political elites during this event. To address this, we examined the emotional sentiment of 30,597 U.S.-related news items in 31 provincial party newspapers in China before and after the shock of the U.S.-China trade war (2015-2022). Employing the event study method (ESM) and Two-way Fixed Effect model, we uncovered two main findings: (1) the onset of the trade war triggered significantly more aggressive propaganda strategies against the U.S. across Chinese provincial party newspapers, and (2) contrary to the conventional wisdom of commercial peace theory, stronger trade ties with the U.S. are linked to provincial leaders adopting a more hardline anti-U.S. stance. Through additional cross-sectional heterogeneity analyses, we found that within the context of the trade war, the positive association between trade ties with a national adversary and exceeding central anti-U.S. propaganda might be driven by heightened loyalty anxieties among subnational political elites. These findings have implications for studies examining the interplay between international relations and domestic politics, research around the survival strategies of political elites in non-electoral contexts, and debates on the determinants of propaganda strategies in international news coverage.</p>