By Tom Fowdy
On September 24th, Chinese leader Xi Jinping will arrive in Washington D.C to meet with President of the United States, Donald Trump.
Although Xi has been to America since, the visit will be the first time he has held a summit with the President of the United States in Washington since the Barack Obama era, which itself is a statement as to how much US-China relations have changed in that time. The second Donald Trump administration occupies an unusual position in that regard, for even though the President has continued competition with Beijing on an economic front, waging a trade war against the country, he has nonetheless become more pragmatic in other areas and advocates a strong personal relationship with Xi Jinping.
Thus, while only a few years ago a visit by China's leader to Washington D.C seemed politically unthinkable, Donald Trump has reversed the adversarial and ideological elements of the US-China relationship while maintaining the competitor parts. In his worldview, China is not an enemy, but it is a competitor and opportunity for the United States, of which America must "win" at in a broader game of commerce. The question which Trump asks is not "How can we cripple China as an adversary?" but rather "How can we put our interests first in dealing with China and not their own?"
As a result, Trump has mixed competition with personalised diplomacy. The highly ideological, Cold War-like elements, orchestrated by individuals such as Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Matthew Pottinger in his previous administration, have been thrown out. The President no longer cares about sensitive issues such as Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in the moralsense, but instead cares about how he can push China to accept a better deal on American terms, improve market access and US exports. Instead, these ideological/sovereign issues are merely seen as bargaining chips for a better deal, for the President does not care about Chinese "internal affairs" but trade wins.
And that is the precise reason why Xi Jinping has been invited to Washington, to secure trade wins. The timing is not a coincidence, for the President has the mid-term elections coming up soon. Things are not going well for Trump, having initiated a catastrophic war against Iran which has taken its toll on energy prices. We can thus assume that the President's political agenda here is to secure, even if piecemeal, a number of publicized trade concessions from Beijing of which he can frame as an economic win to his core constituency. This would include sectors such as American agriculture. In doing so, Trump is not giving the image of capitulating to China, but delivering for American jobs and interests.
For China, on the other hand, while Beijing has played an extreme game of hardball with the United States in negotiations, it has always been clear that its primary interests are to stabilise relations with America, improve relations and offset hostile policies against it. As a result, while making economic concessions of some kind would have been mandatory in diplomatic negotiations to secure such a visit, we can imagine Beijing put a number of prerequisites on the table too. This would likely include demanding more concessions over contentious sovereign issues such as Taiwan, such as pausing arms sales (but it may come back later) and easing restrictions on the export of semiconductor technology to the country. Evidence shows that throughout his second administration, Trump has already acquiesced to demands of this nature, with the State Department Hong Kong "national emergency declaration" being lifted, America's position on Taiwan in the 2025 National Security Strategy being softened, and some chip restrictions eased. We can likely expect more of the same, provided Trump gets what he wants.
However, will this summit see an end to the US-China trade war? Or a fundamental change of the status quo? Not a chance. Trump will continue to maintain large-scale tariffs on China because it remains the core doctrine of his entire policy ethos, and the scope of concessions Beijing would need to offer in order to change that is a political non-starter in terms of domestic interests. After all, having experienced a property and consumption slowdown, China's entire growth model is now premised upon turbocharging state-supported industrial exports. Is therefore, Beijing prepared to end its state subsidy model and give the US unprecedented market access? Absolutely not.
Therefore, Chinese foreign policy continues to be structurally constrained towards resistance to American demands, and thus the US itself will continue to advocate the belief China's own export model constitutes a threat to its national interests, and thus a major breakthrough remains unlikely. Instead, we can expect this visit to accumulate in a deal of sorts that will see both sides make meaningful, but not game-changing concessions, of which Trump will undoubtedly in lieu of the mid-term elections, hail as a victory for American interests. Both sides see this visit as a temporary, convenient political arrangement, of which will serve them both in various ways, but it can't shift the status-quo. US-China competition is structural, it can be navigated, but certainly not shut down.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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