PHOTO: AFP/FILE

REUTERS, Hong Kong

For Donald Trump, the next big China deal is all about the last big China deal. The president’s first trade pact with Beijing, signed in 2019, did little to change Beijing’s behaviour or jump-start American manufacturing. Yet the White House is once again pushing for high-stakes negotiations, even if any agreement could prove as ephemeral as the last.

At first glance, a thaw in relations between the US and China seems a long shot. Trump’s unhappiness about Beijing’s unkept promises from his first term helps explain the president’s intense aggression towards the top US trading partner since returning to the White House. While US tariffs on Chinese goods have fallen from triple-digit levels touched in April, they still stand at 46 percent, per HSBC.

Yet the Trump administration’s policy remains unpredictable. Many in Washington agree that, beyond tariffs, foreign policy towards China is almost non-existent as hawks and doves both vie for the president’s ear, while lesser officials dare not make any moves that might contradict him. As one senior think tanker puts it, the State Department no longer has a real China desk because “Trump is his own China desk officer”.

But with virtually all $580 billion in bilateral trade between the two countries subject to levies, per the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and polls showing public approval of Trump’s economic performance near a record low, the president appears to want a deal with his counterpart Xi Jinping. People familiar with the situation say the White House has in recent months contacted chief executives at big American companies to gauge their interest in joining a delegation to Beijing later this year.

Policymakers and think tankers in Washington DC agree the most likely scenario for a meeting with Xi would involve Trump making a trip to Beijing on either side of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum’s leadership summit, slated to gather in South Korea in late October.

However, Xi first needs to commit to a meeting. For China’s risk-averse top cadres, face-to-face negotiations between heads of state are typically conducted only after an agreement’s central tenets are ironed out. Any trip by Trump, then, would be preceded by a visit from a senior administration official like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Beijing appears willing to wait while the economic harm to the US from tariffs mounts. Trump’s decision to extend a three-month delay to punitive levies on Chinese imports on August 12 underscored their impact on the American economy.

Chinese leaders, faced with their own difficulties in hitting official growth targets, have good reason to want lower tariffs. Hence the visit to Washington at the end of August by trade representative Li Chenggang, who according to China’s commerce ministry met with counterparts from Treasury, Commerce and the Office of the US Trade Representative.