Attention now shifts to an upcoming meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
President Donald Trump’s trade war with China didn’t end with the congressional elections this week.
Despite losing Republican control of the House, Trump is unlikely to see anything in the outcome that will persuade him to drop his hardball tactics with Beijing.
“On China, I don’t see the election changing much,” said Greg Mastel, a former Senate Finance Committee staffer now at the law firm Kelley Drye. “Democrats probably support President Trump on China more than Republicans. In the end, I see President Trump likely to get a win on China.”
Few Democrats ran against Trump’s handling of trade relations with China. One notable exception was Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota but it was not enough for her to hold onto her seat. Her Republican rival, Rep. Kevin Cramer, who has been one of the president’s strongest allies, handily won the election to unseat her in the Senate.
In contrast, Trump made his trade fight with China an early part of his effort to nationalize the congressional races, although he focused more on illegal immigration in the closing weeks.
Trump has accused Beijing of meddling in the election by targeting its trade retaliation at states that voted for him and Vice President Mike Pence. Both he and Pence made political hay out of Chinese advertising supplement inserted in the Sunday Sept. 23 edition of the Des Moines Register.
Still, Republicans lost two congressional seats in Iowa and one in Kansas, which probably reflects at least some concern in the agricultural sector over Trump’s use of tariffs against a key export market, said Bill Reinsch, a trade policy specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
With the election over, attention now shifts to an upcoming meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the annual G-20 summit, being held on Nov. 30-Dec. 1 in Buenos Aires.
That is more likely to produce an agreement to begin serious negotiations, than an immediate deal that would lead to Trump dismantling his tariffs on about $250 billion worth of Chinese goods and Xi removing China’s own duties on about $110 billion of U.
