Trump has found himself negotiating from a position of weakness in his dealings with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
Widely quoted China expert Gordon Chang examines the way Beijing has responded to the tariffs and observes, “In the last two days, both Prez Trump and Treasury Secretary Bessent have softened their tone on China tariffs, so how did Beijing react? It upped its demands. Unfortunately, China’s regime does not reciprocate friendly gestures. It only respects strength.”
That is an accurate and hard-learned lesson, and China is not the only aggressive autocratic regime where that lesson applies. For the past three months, the Trump administration has kept finding bigger and bigger carrots to extend to Moscow, and Vladimir Putin has responded with more demands and more attacks on civilian targets. No less a figure than Newt Gingrich, hardly a knee-jerk critic of the Trump administration’s approaches, is pointing out that this isn’t working.
It is clear from Putin’s attack on Kiev that he still does not believe there are any negative consequences for continuing the war. The West has not yet convinced the Russian dictator that the alternative to a ceasefire is a lot greater threat to his regime. Until he fears that…
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) April 24, 2025
Meanwhile, this morning Trump responded to Putin’s latest brutal attack on Ukrainian civilians.
That is not the forceful statement of a commander in chief addressing a situation where he has a lot of leverage. (The statement “very bad timing” implies that there’s a good time for Russian attacks on civilians in Kyiv.)
Regarding Putin, it’s time for a lot fewer carrots and a lot more sticks. And regarding China, it’s time for the U.S. to maximize its leverage by making nice with every ally and potential ally we have in the Pacific — Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and even Vietnam. (If your perspective of modern Vietnam is through the lens of the Vietnam War, you’re likely mistaken. For a communist-socialist republic, the Vietnamese have surprisingly positive attitudes about the U.S. and surprisingly negative attitudes about the Chinese.) Malaysia and Indonesia have their own long-standing ties to the U.S. and wariness about Chinese naval power, although the governments of both countries are trying to avoid picking a side. Slapping huge tariffs on other countries rarely makes their governments more inclined to cooperate with you!
The U.S. could have a lot more leverage in its dealings with China, but it has to appreciate the value of alliances in the Pacific to do so.