WASHINGTON (BLOOMBERG) - It's not quite a new Cold War yet. Just the cold shoulder.

Some 40 per cent of Americans said they won't buy products from China, according to a survey of 1,012 adults conducted May 12-14 by Washington-based FTI Consulting, a business advisory firm.

That compares with 22 per cent who say they won't buy from India, 17 per cent who refuse to purchase from Mexico and 12 per cent who boycott goods from Europe.

The poll also found: 55 per cent don't think China can be trusted to follow through on its trade-deal commitments signed in January to buy more US products, 78 per cent said they'd be willing to pay more for products if the company that made them moved manufacturing out of China, 66 per cent said they favour raising import restrictions over the pursuit of free-trade deals as a better way to boost the US economy.

For observers of trade policy, that last point is striking because a large majority in the US have traditionally shunned protectionism. According to Gallup, almost four-fifths of Americans embrace international commerce as an opportunity rather that a threat, a number that's steadily risen over the past decade.

After two years of tariff wars and now the scourge of a coronavirus that originated in China, it's hardly surprising to see some souring of US public opinion about the country's main economic rival.

But the degree of the shift and the timing of it - less than six months before a presidential election - may mark a sea change in the electorate. It could embolden some of China's harsher critics in Washington, with huge potential consequences for financial markets.

"Foreigners are an all too easy political target in normal times. But once they become unpopular, politics can turn dangerous, as they turn into policy," said Mr Chad Bown, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "As candidates compete over who can adopt a more extreme stance toward China between now and November, their post-election policies toward Beijing are increasingly being set in stone."

President Donald Trump drove the wedge a little deeper last week when he suggested in an interview on Fox Business Network that the US could sever ties entirely. "There are many things we could do - we could cut off the whole relationship," Mr Trump said when asked about taking punitive steps like reducing US visas for Chinese students.

Beijing's response on Friday (May 15) showed little effort to win a likability contest.

"Such lunacy is a clear by-product, first and foremost, of the proverbial anxiety that the US has suffered from since China began its global ascension," according to an editorial in the Global Times, a Chinese tabloid run by the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party.

Mr Trump's divorce threat revived memories of his tweet last August when, in the heat of the trade war, he "hereby ordered" American companies to look for alternatives, saying "we don't need China and, frankly, would be far better off without them." He called on executives to bring jobs home and make products in the US - repeating his argument for a decoupling from China that the pandemic has only amplified.

FTI's survey from last week showed 86 per cent of respondents say the US relies too heavily on foreign supply chains.

For a majority of US companies that do business in China, uprooting themselves from world's second-largest economy isn't really feasible.

But according to a March survey of members of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, 44 per cent of respondents said it's not possible for the two economies to decouple, down from 66 per cent polled in October. A fifth said decoupling will accelerate.

For US consumers, who may not fully grasp how much they consume from China, the desire for a breakup is intensifying.

According to Ms Kat Devlin, a research associate at the Pew Research Centre's Global Attitudes Project, "we're in somewhat uncharted territory with how Americans see China."

A Pew poll taken in March showed 66 per cent of US adults held China in an unfavourable light - a record high in Pew surveys going back to 2005 and up almost 20 percentage points since Mr Trump took office in January 2017. The survey didn't explicitly ask about the coronavirus. It measured favourable views at 26 per cent, down from 44 per cent three years ago.

That's an unusually abrupt turn because it takes a lot to sway American opinion about foreign powers.

Favourable sentiment toward the European Union, for example, has held fairly steady around 50 per cent since 2002, Ms Devlin says. Positive views on Russia, on the other hand, fell from 44 per cent in 2007 to 18 per cent last year - a drop Ms Devlin says became noticeable after Russia's actions in Crimea.

Gallup polling published in 2018 showed favourable ratings for Japan peaking at 87 per cent, recovering from lows set two decades earlier. That same report showed favourable views on China's surpassing 50 per cent for the first time since early 1989 - an upswing that's since been reversed.

"China's diminished views in recent years is an interesting example because, while views tended to fluctuate somewhat, they historically stayed within a set range," Ms Devlin said. "While negative views did increase amid the US-Japan trade wars of the 1990s, it never peaked as dramatically as we're seeing with China today."