President Donald Trump’s trade battle with China will exacerbate relations with Beijing that are already fraying on several fronts as the U. S. takes a more confrontational stance and an increasingl…
President Donald Trump’s trade battle with China will exacerbate relations with Beijing that are already fraying on several fronts as the U. S. takes a more confrontational stance and an increasingly powerful China stands its ground.
The gloves came off Friday as the world’s two largest economies imposed tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s goods amid a spiraling dispute over technology. It comes at a time when Washington needs China’s help in ending its nuclear standoff with North Korea.
Trump’s much-vaunted personal rapport with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he hosted at his Mar-a-Lago resort three months after taking office, won’t help patch up differences, experts and former officials say.
“The notion that there’s a personal relationship which will somehow supersede China’s strategic interests and the well-being of the Communist Party — including its ability to manage its own economy consistent with its political interests — is absurd,” said Daniel Russel, top U. S. diplomat for East Asia under President Barack Obama.
“There’s no scenario in which an affectionate relationship, real or imagined, is going to stay Xi’s hand,” Russel said.
Troubles in the bilateral relationship go beyond trade. China has chafed about the scope of U. S. relations with Taiwan; U. S. complaints about its construction of military outposts on islands in the South China Sea; tougher screening of Chinese investment in the U. S.; visa restrictions; and accusations that it’s the main source of opioids.
If not new, these are now deepening sources of tension between Washington and Beijing. Even as Trump has sought to cultivate his relationship with the increasingly dominant Chinese leader, his administration has chosen to confront an increasingly defiant China on pretty much all them. It also identified China, along with Russia, as a threat in the most recent U. S. National Security Strategy.
In response, Beijing is hanging tough.
“China has made it abundantly clear that it will never surrender to blackmail or coercion,” Chinese state news agency Xinhua said Friday.
To what extent the trade tensions bleed into other aspects of the U. S.-China relationship, which has retained a mostly upward trajectory since the normalization of ties four decades ago, remains to be seen.
