The trade war between China and the United States began in 2018 has been a hot issue of public opinion in China. What are the political consequences of domestic media coverage and commentary on this issue? This paper conducts an empirical comparative analysis of different media frames and their political consequences in China–United States trade war using experiments and statistics. Three research results have been found: Firstly, the three kinds of media frames choose from real media reports can not only weaken the audience's preference for the United States, but also stimulate their hawkish attitudes towards US on the trade war issue, and increase their political trust in China’s central government. Secondly, no significant difference was found in framing effects between different media frames, which suggests that ordinary people's cognitive ability on complicated political and diplomatic issues is quite limited. Finally, young, poorly educated and those with high authoritarian personalities and left–wing ideologies are more likely to be in?uenced by media frames, while the political attitudes of non-elite groups are more radical than that of the elites. Based on empirical evidence, this paper argues that at least on issue of trade war, the CCP’s information control strategy on public opinion has succeed to a large degree. However, in the long run, this control strategy may undermine the credibility of official media, while popular nationalism stimulated by official propaganda may cause a negative impact on China's foreign relations and international image.