Along with the rapid and steady growth of China’s economy and the continuous expansion of the scale of imports and exports, the uncertainty of trade policies faced by China has also reached an unprecedented level. The research findings indicate that trade policy uncertainty significantly suppresses the ESG performance of enterprises. After a series of robustness tests such as substituting the explained variable and using the instrumental variable method, this conclusion still holds. Further research reveals that the inhibitory effects are more pronounced on non-state-owned enterprises, smaller enterprises, and enterprises in the regions with a high degree of marketization. Moreover, trade policy uncertainty has an inhibitory effect on the ESG performance of non-polluting enterprises, but the inhibitory effect on heavily polluting enterprises is not significant. It is further discovered that trade policy uncertainty will increase the financing constraints faced by enterprises, reduce their efficient investment, and thereby suppress their ESG performance.