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After Demolishing the U.S.-China Relationship, Trump Is Rebuilding It His Way
Story by Lingling Wei • 16h • 5 min read
President Trump is also expected to travel to Beijing early next year.
© Francis Chung/Press Pool
President Trump blew up America’s decadeslong engagement with China during his first term. Now, he is poised to relaunch the kind of engagement with Beijing embraced by predecessors from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama—but on Trump’s terms.
Top trade negotiators for the U.S. and China, wrapping up two days of tense talks in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, said they arrived at a framework agreement that sets the table for Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to agree on a major deal when they meet Thursday in South Korea.
The deal itself appears to be a transactional truce, potentially involving China resuming purchases of U.S. soybeans and delaying new controls on rare-earth minerals. On the table for the U.S. is shelving new tariffs, rolling back the 20% levy on China over its role in the fentanyl crisis in the U.S., and potentially refraining from taking new policy actions against China.
But there is more to the agreement than just a temporary cease-fire. It is the first plank in a newly structured, high-level dialogue, intended to lock in a full year of leader-led diplomacy. The schedule is ambitious: Trump is expected to travel to Beijing early next year followed by a reciprocal visit from Xi later that year.
For Trump, it’s a stunning reversal.
“The first Trump presidency put the U.S. and China on a pathway toward long-term, unquestionable competition, if not confrontation,” said Evan Medeiros, a former senior national-security official in the Obama administration and now a professor at Georgetown University. “Now it appears that Trump is flipping his own script on China, initiating a new phase of more and higher-level engagement.”
Beyond high-level diplomacy, the truce sets the stage for a tactical stabilization of the relationship over the next year.
Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2019 at a G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
© Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
This detente pivots Trump back to his preferred role as the central dealmaker, securing short-term economic relief—like resumed soybean purchases—that plays well with Republican voting states.
This new, highly structured diplomatic calendar contrasts sharply with his first-term approach. While Trump met with Xi during his first presidency, that engagement was often ad hoc and overshadowed by escalating tariff battles, lacking the formal, reciprocal scheduling now being proposed.
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It is also a dynamic that analysts say provides Beijing with advantages.
The thinking in Beijing’s policymaking circles, according to people who consult with Chinese officials, is that Xi is approaching his near-term objective: a “strategic stalemate”—an enduring equilibrium where American pressure becomes manageable and China buys time to catch up to the U.S.
Still, this pivot to re-engagement doesn’t mark a return to the past.
The old engagement, championed by decades of U.S. policymakers, was built on a liberal, aspirational hope: that economic integration would inevitably lead to a more open, politically reformed China. Even Obama’s so-called “pivot to Asia” strategy was predicated on engagement with Beijing, backed with a military buildup in the region.
Trump has said he would press China to resume purchases of U.S. soybeans.
© Ben Brewer/Bloomberg News
The Trump 2.0 version, by contrast, appears born of necessity. This new framework isn’t about partnership, cooperation or shared values. Instead, some analysts say, it is a cold-eyed recognition that open confrontation has become too costly and that critical U.S. interests—from managing China’s chokehold on rare-earth minerals to stanching the flow of fentanyl—require a transactional dialogue.
It is an attempt to establish rules for a managed, long-term superpower rivalry, these analysts say.
This detente is built on fragile ground. The fundamental stress points in the relationship—from the future of Taiwan and military maneuvers in the South China Sea to the race for supremacy in artificial intelligence and quantum computing—remain unresolved and volatile.
And for an administration that thrives on unpredictability, this new script could be only one geopolitical provocation, or one presidential social-media post, away from being flipped all over again.
“A trade truce will not change the path of the U.S.-China competition or increase trust between the U.S. and China,” said Daniel Bahar, a former assistant U.S. trade representative who was involved in negotiations during Trump’s first-term trade war with China.
“But it will buy time for each side to continue to derisk from the other, like China pushing for self-sufficiency in the chip sector and the U.S. racing to build alternative rare-earth supply chains,” said Bahar, now a managing director at Rock Creek Global Advisors in Washington. “Each side will use the truce to be better prepared for the next trade battle.”
A China Coast Guard ship navigating in August in the South China Sea.
© Adrian Portugal/Reuters
Time is what Xi needs most. With China’s economy battling a persistent slowdown, this framework provides a crucial window of stability. It pauses the trade war, removes immediate economic threats and allows Beijing to focus on its domestic frailties.
At the conclusion of a high-level Communist Party meeting last week, Beijing made clear what it plans to do with that time: double down on a five-year growth strategy focused on heavy state-directed investments in manufacturing and technology.
Critically, the concessions from Beijing this week are tactical, not structural. Any agreement to buy U.S. soybeans would be a return to the status quo, not a fundamental reform. The compromises reflect a new playbook Xi has devised for Trump 2.0 that involves making calculated concessions to appease the president while standing firm on issues of core interest to Beijing.
The truce doesn’t address the core issues that started the confrontation during Trump’s first term—China’s massive state subsidies, intellectual property theft and the state-led drive for technological dominance.
The truce also offers valuable symbolism for both Xi and Trump.
For Trump, it provides a platform for the U.S. president to project his image as a master dealmaker who engages with a chief rival, demonstrating that his tough-on-China stance has drawn Beijing back into talks, all on his own terms.
For Xi, the prospect of a state visit to Washington—a prize he hasn’t enjoyed since Obama hosted him in 2015—is a powerful tool to bolster his image on the world stage.
Beijing, for its part, has been angling for a Trump visit. If that happens, Xi, who hosted in September an extravagant military parade in Beijing where he was surrounded by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, would be able to show his people that even the American president wants to come to China.
At a time of persistent economic uncertainty at home, this pageantry would amount to a profound political gift. It would allow Xi to burnish an image of a global statesman, signaling to his domestic audience and the world that China has successfully weathered the storm of American confrontation and forced Washington back to the negotiating table.
Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com
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