As President Donald Trump tries to turn his global trade war into a one-on-one showdown with China, he is finding that he has alienated some key U.S. partners who could boost America’s position in a fight between the world’s largest and second-largest economies.
For more than a decade, American leaders, including Trump, have tried to reorient U.S. economic policy, security strategy and alliances to confront China’s rise. Yet nearly three months into his second term, Trump’s “America First” tariffs and budget cutbacks may have provided Beijing its clearest opening yet to escape years of U.S. pressure.
This week, Trump doubled down on China, raising duties on its imports to a staggering 145%, even as he eased off his planned tariffs on much of the world’s goods for 90 days in the face of a stock market meltdown. But the whipsaw of economic threats on American allies and partners has already taken a toll, beyond just upending global trade.
As Trump preaches protectionism, China is sending a starkly different message: Its markets will only open wider, and the world can count on China for much-desired stability.
In its own fight for survival, Beijing — the primary target of Trump’s tariff wrath — is jostling for a position in the global trade reshuffle to pounce at the U.S. isolationism, exploit its lapses and gain greater influences.
“The world must embrace fairness and reject hegemonism,” the Chinese government has declared, in a clear reference to the U.S. It’s an apparent call for unity from countries facing high tariffs from the U.S., as its leaders have held talks with their counterparts from the European Union, South Korea, Japan and more.
“As the second largest economy and second largest market for consumer goods, China is committed to opening even wider to the world, no matter how the international situation changes,” the Chinese government said in a position statement on U.S. tariffs.
US moves cause multiple counter reactions
The blow the Trump administration has dealt to the rest of the world with his tariff agenda has come after he pulled the U.S. from international groups such as the World Health Organization, dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and gutted the U.S. Agency for Global Media, raising worries that the U.S. is losing friends and ceding influences to China on several fronts.
“We should be forging stronger coalitions to compete with China. But instead, the Trump Administration is keen on turning our back on the very partnerships that have helped keep the U.S. strong and secure for generations,” Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said shortly after Trump unveiled his tariff plan last week.
But the game also is shifting for Beijing, as evidenced by Trump’s announcing a tariff pause for all nations but China.
“You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when, in fact, we’ve seen the opposite effect. The entire world is calling the United States of America, not China, because they need our markets,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said after Trump’s announcement.
Yet Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the administration is not interested in coalition-building, which was a hallmark of the Biden administration’s efforts to counter China and extend the U.S agenda abroad.
“The answer is, the president is focused on America,” Lutnick told reporters. “He’s going to try to negotiate the best deals for America with each of these great countries that are calling us that want to talk. So he’s not trying to build a coalition or any kind of thing like that.”
An opportunity for Beijing?
Trump’s drastic tariff plans have prompted countries to explore new approaches. Beijing has been presented with an opportunity but is not taking advantage of it, said Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center,
“With China hitting back the U.S. so hard by their own retaliatory tariffs, and both countries escalating into a trade war between the world’s two largest economies, I think they’re both focused on each other and not focused on the other countries around the world,” he said, adding China’s manufacturing overcapacity would be a challenge to any other market.
Gabriel Wildau, a managing director at the consultancy Teneo, observed in a note that Trump’s tariff suspension “appears to be at least partially an effort to isolate China” and that China now “faces diminished prospects of assembling a broad international coalition to resist US tariffs by forging new trade blocs that exclude the U.S.”
On Wednesday, House Democrats said Trump tariffs — which have since been paused — hurt ties with critical Pacific allies and partners, including Japan, South Korea, Australia and Vietnam, by pushing them away from the United States but closer to China.
“We have launched a trade war against every single one of our partners in the Asia region,” said the panel’s ranking democrat, Rep. Adam Smith, of Washington. And from Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn.: “This is driving our allies in the wrong direction.”
Not quite, said Mississippi Rep. Trent Kelly who defended the tariffs. “Being taken advantage of is not how we become strong leaders,” the Republican said.
Shortly after Trump announced the “reciprocal” tariffs on April 2, Krishnamoorthi called the move “a complete capitulation of American global leadership that will only benefit the Chinese Communist Party.”
China navigates the new landscape
As the tariff war with the U.S. intensified, Chinese Premier Li Qiang had a phone conversation with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. China, said Li, was “ready to work with the European side to promote the sound and steady development of China-EU relations.” Li said the two are each other’s “most important trading partners”, their economies are ”highly complementary” and their interests “closely intertwined.”
Von der Leyen stressed the responsibility of Europe and China to support a strong reformed trading system “in response to the widespread disruption caused by the U.S. tariffs”. But she also told Li that European businesses need better access to the Chinese market.
Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, in a video call Thursday, told the trade chief of Malaysia that China was ready to work with trading partners and to resolve respective concerns “in a joint effort to safeguard the multilateral trading system.” Malaysia holds the rotating chair of ASEAN, the regional grouping of 10 Southeast Asian nations.
That same day, the economic ministers of ASEAN countries, in a joint statement, expressed concerns over the unilateral tariffs. “This has caused uncertainty and will bring significant challenges to businesses, especially micro, small and medium enterprises as well as to global trade dynamics,” the statement said.
In late March, Wang also met his counterparts from Japan and South Korea before they issued a statement recognizing the need for cooperation to address “emerging challenges” and pledging to enhance cooperation on supply chains.
But in a sign of the group’s limitations, the meeting produced no agreement on what to do about U.S. tariffs.
Source: Ap
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