With the government’s continuous promotion of the “dual carbon” strategy and the vigorous development of green productivity, the ESG concept of “balancing morality and benefits” is receiving increasing attention from all sectors of society. By using the sample of China’s A-shared listed companies from 2010 to 2022, this paper analyzes the supply chain spillover effect of ESG performance aspiration gap based on the organizational expectation theory. The study finds that target firms with a wider ESG performance aspiration gap are associated with lower trade credit financing. Mechanism testing demonstrates that the ESG performance aspiration gap reduces trade credit financing mainly through two mechanisms: affecting firms’ uncertainty risk and affecting product market competitive positions. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of ESG performance aspiration gap on trade credit financing is stronger in non-state-owned enterprises, and when positive media coverage is less, analyst attention is lower, and GRI reporting guidelines are not followed. Furthermore, this paper finds that the ESG performance aspiration gap exacerbates firms’ financing constraints. This paper not only enriches the literature on the economic consequences of ESG performance and the influencing factors of trade credit financing, but also provides important practical implications and policy recommendations for firms to better practice ESG concepts and for regulatory authorities to improve ESG institutional rules.