Washington (AP) — On the campaign trail last year, President Donald Trump talked tough about imposing tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese goods and threatened to renew the trade war with China. However, now that he’s back in the White House, Trump appears to be seeking a more nuanced relationship with the country.
“We look forward to doing very well with China and getting along with China,” Trump said Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in comments that suggested Beijing could help end the war in Ukraine and reduce nuclear arms.
As he moves forward with plans to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1, Trump has not set a firm date for China. He’s only repeated his plan for a much lower 10% tax on Chinese imports in retaliation for China’s production of chemicals used in fentanyl.
Trump, who spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping days before taking office, seems to be showing restraint and bowing to a more complicated reality than he described while running for office. Speaking of potential tariffs on China in a recent Fox News interview, he said: “They don’t want them, and I’d rather not have to use it.”
Liu Yawei, senior adviser on China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, said Trump has become “more pragmatic.” “The signaling, at least from the election to the inauguration, seems to be more positive than has been expected before,” Liu said. “Hopefully, this positive dynamic can be preserved and continued. Being more pragmatic, less ideological will be good for everyone.”
A Chinese expert on American foreign policy acknowledged that there are many “uncertainties and unknowns about the future” of U.S.-China relations. But Da Wei, director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said Trump’s recent change in tone offers “encouraging signals.”
Now it will be up to Trump’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to help chart a new path for the second term. Rubio said China has “lied, cheated, hacked and stolen” its way to global superpower status “at our expense.” He called China “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.”
Yet Rubio, who was twice sanctioned by Beijing and is known for his hawkish views on the Chinese Communist Party, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U.S. should engage with China because “it’s in the interest of global peace and stability.”
In a Friday phone call, China’s veteran foreign minister issued a veiled warning to Rubio, telling him to behave. Wang Yi conveyed the message in their first conversation since Rubio’s confirmation.
Beijing seeks opportunities and stays ready to play tough. Chinese leaders are betting on engaging with Trump directly when his Cabinet members and advisers appear to hold clashing views. Trump “is the most important person above all those different voices, and he can at least set the tone of future policy,” Da said.
That may explain Beijing’s friendly overture at the start of the second Trump administration. In response to Trump’s inauguration invitation, Xi sent a special representative. Beijing has also signaled a willingness to be flexible on the future of TikTok, which Trump sought to ban during his first administration. But he has now come to the social media app’s rescue, offering more time for its Chinese-based parent company to sell and downplaying TikTok’s national security risks.
After Trump said he preferred not to use tariffs on China, the Chinese Foreign Ministry echoed that trade and economic cooperation between the two countries are mutually beneficial. But Beijing is also ready to play tough, if necessary, after learning a lesson from Trump’s first term.