Why Isn’t China Playing Trump’s Game?

Over the past month, through a flurry of phone calls and flattery, Canada and Mexico have twice successfully fended off U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, at least earning temporary reprieves. Meanwhile, Chinese officials have taken a different tack. Like a seasoned boxer in the first round of a fight, rather than lunging in, China appears to be conserving its energy.

In doing so, Beijing may have avoided the frenzy, but it hasn’t avoided the tariffs. So far, Trump levied 10 percent duties on all Chinese imports on Feb. 4, then added an extra 10 percent this week.

That will bring the average tariff on Chinese imports to the United States up to 33 percent, from roughly 3 percent in the antebellum days of 2017, before the first Trump administration imposed tariffs. Former President Joe Biden subsequently later added his own set. For Chinese leaders looking to revive a flagging economy, the growing mountain of tariffs hasn’t been welcome news.

Given the economic costs of the U.S. tariffs on the Chinese economy, it may seem odd that Chinese leaders haven’t fought harder to prevent them.

One reason that they haven’t, experts say, is that the dramatic swings of the Trump presidency-meets-TV show clash with Beijing’s desire for tightly choreographed diplomacy. President Xi Jinping, they say, would not want to have his dealings with Trump leaked to the press in an unflattering light—or worse yet, to be castigated in the Oval Office as the cameras are rolling.

“President Xi is an authoritarian leader of a country where it does matter how he’s perceived by his party and by the military and by the people. I think he cannot afford to lose face. And certainly, doing this kind of conciliatory approach might make President Xi look weaker, and I don’t think he’s willing to do that,” said Rush Doshi on FP Live this week. Doshi is a senior fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and formerly served as the deputy senior director for China and Taiwan in Biden’s National Security Council.

Beijing also seems clear-eyed to the indications that Trump’s commitment to waging a trade war runs deep and likely cannot be thwarted in short order. In his executive orders imposing tariffs on China, Trump cited the flow of fentanyl from China to the United States and Beijing’s failure to take “adequate steps to alleviate the illicit drug crisis” as the basis for the punitive measures. Beijing has countered that it has been cooperating closely with Washington to target the drug trade and that the two countries have made progress. Overdose deaths in the United States fell last year compared to 2023.

As such, Chinese officials have concluded that the issue is merely a pretext for the trade war. “The U.S. is bent on using the fentanyl issue as a flimsy excuse to raise tariffs again on Chinese imports,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said this week.

“It’s possible, like Canada and Mexico, if [Chinese officials] had engaged, they could have gotten a suspension,” said Wendy Cutler, the vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. But, she added, speaking on March 7, “just in the past few hours, Trump again is talking about hitting Canada on lumber and dairy now. So there almost seems like there’s no end to this, and maybe that’s how they’re looking at the engagement with Canada versus as it being successful.”

Facing the prospect, then, of a much wider and more enduring trade war, instead of focusing on short-term flattery, Beijing appears to be girding for the battle ahead.

China has given Trump a preview of its wide menu of retaliatory options. In February, Beijing imposed tariffs on U.S. energy imports and a selection of other goods; next week, it will slap tariffs on a wide range of agricultural products, including soybeans. But it has also targeted specific U.S. companies—launching an antitrust investigation against Google and adding other companies to its “unreliable entities list”—and hit U.S. critical mineral choke points, showcasing the range of retaliatory options it holds.

Chinese officials have also started taking a more defiant tone in their messaging to Washington. In response to the tariffs this week, Lin—the Foreign Ministry spokesperson—lobbed an unusually aggressive line at the United States. “If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end,” he said.

And at a Friday press conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress, Foreign Minister Wang Yi argued that tariffs hurt the United States, too.

Still, Wang left open the prospect for reconciliation. “Cooperation will bring about mutual benefit and win-win,” he said, but he added, “China will definitely take countermeasures in response to arbitrary pressure.”

On the U.S. side, that prospect apparently isn’t dead, either. In a press conference on Thursday, Trump said that he had a “great relationship with President Xi” and implied that he has been in touch with him, although he wouldn’t clarify whether a direct call had taken place since he took office. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has reportedly expressed interest in meeting with Xi during his first 100 days in the White House. In Trump’s first term, Xi rolled out the red carpet for Trump’s visit to China in 2017, wining and dining him with an unprecedented official dinner in the Forbidden City.

Xi “gave him essentially a kind of bilateral treatment that he gave no other U.S. president ever,” Doshi said. But there’s a sense, he added, “that it didn’t really work, and that maybe it’s not going to work with this guy.”

Flattery may still be on the table as the trade war ramps up, but for now, it seems that Beijing isn’t in a rush.

“I would not be surprised if we see him at some point in the coming months meeting with Xi Jinping,” said Cutler, of the Asia Society Policy Institute. “But from my point of view, China is going to want a lot of assurances before any meeting, because they are not going to want to be in a position where their leader is embarrassed, humiliated, or subject to new demands.”