The only effective deal Trump can make with China is to put Beijing in check.
The only effective deal Trump can make with China is to put Beijing in check.
P resident-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese president Xi Jinping to the U.S. presidential inauguration ceremony on January 20. Trump says that he has a great relationship with Xi and understands China, and he seems comfortable with audacious moves. Audacity has its place in statecraft, to be sure. But Trump seems to think that the U.S.–China relationship can be reduced down to “a deal” and that Xi will want “a deal” after tariff pressures force him into one. Trump and some in his circle also have begun to hint that Taiwan is taking advantage of the U.S. and isn’t paying its fair share for all the support the United States provides.
This worldview is probably not how things will unfold over the next few years. It is possible and even likely that Beijing will offer some kind of concession that will allow President Trump to claim a negotiating win, even as Xi and team laugh up their sleeves and continue to show contempt for the U.S. and the world, threaten strategic U.S. interests, and generally do as they please.
Chinese leaders will ignore any agreement with the U.S. before the president’s signature dries. They will attempt to make a fool out of him both inside and outside China. This is probably how Putin’s Russia will try to undermine Trump and his team: make agreements that mean nothing and continue to undermine the U.S. and our interests. But hopefully the speed and pie-in-the-face nature of China’s lies to the world over major concerns including Covid-19, Hong Kong, and man-made Chinese islands and military bases in the South China Sea will convince the Trump administration to eventually acknowledge that U.S. “deals” with China can be made to stick only after Xi and his cronies are forced by serious pressure to accept reality. Ronald Reagan had an audacious view of change in geopolitics that he acted on by putting constant pressure on the Soviet Union and Mikhail Gorbachev, which is what made Reagan’s deals (strategic arms reductions) work. PR stunts and “agreements” without sustained pressure will result in Xi’s treatment of Trump with public backstabbing that would embarrass Brutus.
Where should the Trump team apply that pressure? Most important are China’s “grey zone” tactics in the Indo-Pacific, which have changed the military status quo in the region and for the United States. This proceeded apace on Trump’s prior watch, even as he stressed how tough he was on China and how much Xi respected him. First and foremost, these actions endanger direct U.S. interests. That they also endanger Taiwan’s sovereignty is beside the point. Some in Trump’s circle seem not to understand that.
What has Beijing been doing?
First, Chinese maritime operations have drastically reduced the operating area of the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea, which is vital to U.S. trade and commerce. There have been no consequences for this, which advanced during the first Trump administration.
Second, China’s military actions are starting to affect the blue-water operating areas from Japan’s southern islands southward, which will impede U.S. flexibility in the broader Pacific.
Third, Taiwan makes more than 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors, including more than 90 percent of the most advanced ones. The loss of that capacity, either from PRC dominance of Taiwan or through some short-sighted “deal” the U.S. does with Beijing, or by U.S. pressure on Taiwan to make concessions to Beijing, would create major disruptions to the U.S. economy and to U.S technology superiority in many defense and nondefense industries.
Absent U.S. focus and pressure on Xi to change direction, the combined effects of these three trends will be to put supply chains more at risk than during Covid, put countless U.S. jobs at risk, and disrupt trade routes on which the U.S. depends. Together, those would give China more leverage over the global economy, even at a time when its own internal economic and social pressures should be making it harder for Beijing to gain that leverage. In other words, short-sighted U.S. policy in search of “a deal” that doesn’t change the underlying fundamentals would give China what it cannot achieve on its own.
Despite an understandable desire for “a deal” and other simple solutions, what we need is serious, sustained, operational pressure by the U.S. and like-minded countries on China on every front. The Trump team will realize that’s the only way to manage the relationship with China. It should not be their goal to make China great again, which a short-sighted policy in search of “a deal” could end up doing.