The ferocious US-China trade war, initiated by the United States, suggests that cooperation with China is under threat. Despite the consensus that foreign perceptions of China generally differ from those of other countries, no study tests this notion. We require a bilateral perspective that departs from the common approach, which examines trade preferences unilaterally without considering trading partner behavior and identity. Our survey experiments show that citizens generally strongly support reciprocal trade policy principles advanced by the WTO. At the same time, variations across countries prevail. Support for reciprocity in response to a free-trade initiative is significantly greater for traditional allies than for political adversaries like China. However, compared to Russia, protectionist attitudes towards China appear less severe. Overall, trade and foreign policy issues are more strongly intertwined than often assumed. As the growing anti-globalization sentiment is rooted in the identity of the other country, the threat to trade cooperation is more fundamental than existing studies suggest.