{"id":1147,"date":"2025-04-15T05:47:26","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T05:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/trumps-dilemma-a-trade-war-that-threatens-every-other-negotiation-with-china\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T05:47:26","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T05:47:26","slug":"trumps-dilemma-a-trade-war-that-threatens-every-other-negotiation-with-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/trumps-dilemma-a-trade-war-that-threatens-every-other-negotiation-with-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Dilemma: A Trade War That Threatens Every Other Negotiation With China"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President Trump came into office sounding as if he were eager to deal with President Xi Jinping of China on the range of issues dividing the world\u2019s two biggest superpowers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He and his aides signaled that they wanted to resolve trade disputes and lower the temperature on Taiwan, curb fentanyl production and get to a deal on TikTok. Perhaps, over time, they could manage a revived nuclear arms race and competition over artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Today it is hard to imagine any of that happening, at least for a year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Trump\u2019s decision to stake everything on winning a trade war with China threatens to choke off those negotiations before they even begin. And if they do start up, Mr. Trump may be entering them alone, because he has alienated the allies who in recent years had come to a common approach to countering Chinese power.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In conversations over the past 10 days, several administration officials, insisting that they could not speak on the record, described a White House deeply divided on how to handle Beijing. The trade war erupted before the many factions inside the administration even had time to stake out their positions, much less decide which issues mattered most.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The result was strategic incoherence. Some officials have gone on television to declare that Mr. Trump\u2019s tariffs on Beijing were intended to coerce the world\u2019s second-largest economy into a deal. Others insisted that Mr. Trump was trying to create a self-sufficient American economy, no longer dependent on its chief geopolitical competitor, even if that meant decoupling from the $640 billion in two-way trade in goods and services.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWhat is the Trump administration\u2019s grand strategy for China?\u201d said Rush Doshi, one of America\u2019s leading China strategists, who is now at the Council of Foreign Relations and Georgetown University. \u201cThey don\u2019t have a grand strategy yet. They have a range of disconnected tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Doshi says he holds open the hope that Mr. Trump could reach deals with Japan, South Korea, India, Taiwan and the European Union that would allow them to confront Chinese trade practices together, attract allied investment in U.S. industry and increase security ties.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIf you are up against someone big, you need to get bigger scale \u2014 and that\u2019s why we need our allies to be with us,\u201d said Mr. Doshi, who in recent days published an article in Foreign Affairs with Kurt M. Campbell, the former deputy secretary of state, arguing for a new approach. \u201cThis is an era in which strategic advantage will once again accrue to those who can operate at scale. China possesses scale, and the United States does not \u2014 at least not by itself,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Trump insisted on Monday that his tariffs were working so well that he might place more of them on China, among other nations. Just 48 hours after he carved out a huge exemption for cellphones, computer equipment and many electronic components \u2014 nearly a quarter of all trade with China \u2014 he said he might soon announce additional tariffs targeting imported computer chips and pharmaceuticals. \u201cThe higher the tariff, the faster they come in,\u201d he said of companies investing in the United States to avoid paying the import tax.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">So far, the Chinese response has been one of controlled escalation. Beijing has matched every one of Mr. Trump\u2019s tariff hikes, trying to send the message that it can endure the pain longer than the United States can. And in a move that appeared to experts to have been prepared months ago, China announced that it was suspending exports of a range of critical minerals and magnets used by automakers, semiconductor producers and weapons builders \u2014 a reminder to Washington that Beijing has many tools to interrupt supply chains.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The result, said R. Nicholas Burns, who left his post in January as the American ambassador to China, is \u201cone of the most serious crises in U.S.-Chinese relations since the resumption of full diplomatic relations in 1979.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cBut Americans should have no sympathy for the Chinese government, which describes itself as the victim in this confrontation,\u201d said Mr. Burns. \u201cThey have been the greatest disrupter in the international trade system.\u201d He said the challenge now would be \u201cto restore communications at the highest levels to avoid a decoupling of the two economies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">So far, neither side wants to be the one to initiate those communications, at least in public, for fear of being perceived as the one that blinked. Mr. Trump often insists he has a \u201cgreat relationship\u201d with Mr. Xi, but he gave the Chinese leader no direct warning about what was coming \u2014 or a pathway to head it off. And Mr. Xi has pointedly avoided joining the ranks of what the White House insists are 75 countries that say they want to strike a deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">There are flickers of back-channel communications: Cui Tiankai, who served as China\u2019s ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2021, was in Washington as the tariffs were rolling out, talking to old contacts and clearly looking for a way to defuse the growing confrontation. Though retired, Mr. Cui is still among the Chinese with deep connections in both capitals \u2014 he is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and American officials still use him as a conduit to the Chinese leadership.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But recent history suggests that freezes in the U.S.-China relationship can be long-lasting and that relations never quite get back to where they had been before. The August 2022 visit to Taiwan by a congressional delegation led by Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who at the time was still the speaker of the House, led China to send its air and naval forces on military exercises over the \u201cmedian line\u201d in the Taiwan Strait. Nearly three years later, those exercises have only intensified.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The following winter a high-altitude balloon, which China claimed was a weather balloon and U.S. intelligence officials said was stuffed with intelligence-gathering equipment to geolocate communications transmissions, crossed over the continental United States. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ultimately ordered it shot down off the South Carolina coast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Again, it took months to get past the mutual recriminations and set up a summit meeting between Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden. That encounter resulted in some modest agreements on cracking down on fentanyl precursors, along with a joint statement that A.I. technologies should never be used in nuclear command-and-control systems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-7\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the stakes in those confrontations were not as high as they are in the emerging trade war, which could help push both countries to the brink of recession \u2014 and could ultimately spill into the power plays happening each day around Taiwan, in the South China Sea and just offshore of the Philippines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Among the questions hanging over the administration now is whether it can put together a coherent approach to China at a moment when key members of Mr. Trump\u2019s inner circle are arguing in public about the right strategy. Elon Musk, who relies on China as a key supplier to his companies Tesla and SpaceX, called Peter Navarro, a top White House trade adviser, a \u201cmoron\u201d and \u201cdumber than a sack of bricks.\u201d Mr. Navarro shrugged it off during a Sunday appearance on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press,\u201d saying, \u201cI\u2019ve been called worse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back Monday on a Chinese commerce official who dismissed the tariffs as a \u201cjoke.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThese are not a joke,\u201d Mr. Bessent said in Argentina, where he is on a visit. But then he added that the tariffs were so big that \u201cno one thinks they\u2019re sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-8\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But whether they are sustainable is a different question than whether Mr. Trump or Mr. Xi can afford, politically, to be the first to back away from them. And then the administration will have to decide what its priorities are when it comes to China. Will the United States declare that it will defend Taiwan? (Mr. Trump clearly has his hesitations, based on his public statements.) Will it seek to find common projects to work on with Beijing?<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It is hardly unusual for an administration to spend months, maybe more than a year, debating how to navigate a relationship as complex as the one with China. President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger spent years plotting out their approach to what was still called \u201cRed China,\u201d resulting in Mr. Nixon\u2019s historic trip to the country and the yearslong diplomatic opening it triggered. President Bill Clinton entered office having campaigned against the \u201cbutchers of Beijing,\u201d a reference to the killings in Tiananmen Square and the crackdowns that followed, and he ended his term ushering China into the World Trade Organization. President George W. Bush courted Chinese leaders to join the battle against terrorism.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Biden had to get beyond the Covid era before he settled on a strategy of denying Beijing access to critical semiconductors and other technology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But none was trying to overcome what Mr. Trump faces. He has unleashed an act of economic confrontation so large that it may poison the relationship with a country that is deeply intertwined with the American economy. In the end, Mr. Trump may have to choose between an unhappy marriage or an abrupt divorce.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Trump came into office sounding as if he were eager to deal with President Xi Jinping of China on the range of issues dividing the world\u2019s two biggest superpowers. He and his aides signaled that they wanted to resolve trade disputes and lower the temperature on Taiwan, curb fentanyl production and get to a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[203,844,845,198,246,197,605],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-china","tag-dilemma","tag-negotiation","tag-threatens","tag-trade","tag-trumps","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}