When President Trump threatened the rates for Canada, Mexico and China in January and said those countries had to do more to stop the flow of drugs and migrants to the United States, Canadian and Mexican officers racing to Washington, with cards and videos that describe their efforts to be their boundaries.
Canada created a “fentanyl tsar” and committed new resources to the fight against organized crime, while Mexico sent troops to the border and supplied cartel agents in the American detention. As a result, Mr. Trump paused rates on the North -American neighbors of America for 30 days.
China has never made this kind of overtures and, according to Mr. Trump, did not need any major movements to stop the flow from Fentanyl to the United States. So on February 4, Mr Trump continued to impose a rate of 10 percent for all Chinese imports. Last week the president said that on March 4 he would add another 10 percent on top of all existing Chinese rates.
Mr. Trump is quick to radically transform the trade relationship of the US-China. The Chinese move much more cautiously and deliberately while trying to judge Mr Trump and determine what he actually wants from China. Some advisers from Mr Trump, including Minister of Finance Scott Bessent and State Secretary Marco Rubio, have made calls with their Chinese counterparts. But a call between Mr Trump and Xi Jinping, the leader of China, is not explained.
The Chinese do not want to initiate a conversation because they do not want to be seen as pleading and are on their care to offer concessions before they understand the parameters of the debate, said people who are familiar with the discussions. Instead, Chinese officials, academics and others close to the government had discreet conversations to try to determine Mr Trump's motives, while various aspects of a possible trade agreement between the countries are driving the reaction of the Americans.
“With my experience with the Chinese, they are suspicious in the first rounds of a negotiation that there are hidden or other reasons to be careful,” said Michael Pillsbury, a China expert who advises the Trump government to deal with the country.
The Chinese side has transmitted that they would like to work with the United States on mutual advantageous measures. But they have difficulty identifying people in the United States who see as reliable channels for communication, according to a person who is close to the Chinese government.
They also try to assess the importance of some recent steps of the administration, such as a memorandum that proposed strict limitations for investments between the countries. Mr. Trump publicly contradicted those memo days after he signed it and said he welcomed Chinese investments.
“I think the Chinese are in a waiting and listening mode,” said Myron Brilliant, who worked with companies for years to understand the Chinese and recently returned from a trip to China. “They absorb all kinds of input, they start their consultations, they don't press the panic button yet.”
“There is a willingness, a hunger to conclude a deal with the Trump administration, but China does not want any conditions about it and is looking for more clarity about the parameters of a deal,” said Mr. Brilliant, a senior counselor at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, a consultancy firm.
At the end of February a delegation, including Cui Tiankai, met the former Chinese ambassador in the United States, representatives of Think Tanks in Washington, according to more than half a dozen people who are familiar with the discussions.
During meetings and dinners, the Chinese delegation spent the hope that the countries could reach an accommodation, and drove ideas for a potential trade agreement, including important purchases of American agricultural products and Chinese investments in the United States, said different people.
They called for the treatment of China as an equal partner and criticized previous measures that the Biden administration took to 'contain' China, such as export controls. The delegation also threatened that if further American rates were to take effect, China could withdraw a law enforcement package that it had compiled to combat the fentanyl trade, including information that could be used to prosecute Chinese companies, one of the people said. They acknowledged that the Chinese economy had a hard time and that more rates could harm it.
Current and former advisers and others who are familiar with Mr Trump's thinking say that he has shown interest in concluding a broad deal with Mr. Xi, who could withhold Chinese purchases and investments, as well as cooperation in the field of issues such as nuclear safety.
But Mr. Trump also believes that China has taken the deal that he signed in 2020 by not buying enough products. Mr. Trump also has no aversion to setting up the pressure on Beijing by imposing rates and seeing them as a source of leverage in negotiations.
Mr. Trump said that he has a great relationship with Mr. Xi and wants the Chinese to invest in the United States. When asked in February whether he would conclude a trade agreement with China, Mr. Trump replied: “It is possible.”
“We have concluded a great trade agreement with China,” he said. “The problem is that Biden has not forced them to adhere to it.”
In an interview on television on FOX on Sunday, Howard Lutnick, the secretary of the trade, said that the Chinese rather than to stop the production of Fentanyl, gave the maximum subsidy “to people who made the ingredients.
“The Chinese must stop this murder of Americans,” he said.
The rates that Mr Trump has threatened to impose China since it came to the office are about similar to those he imposed during his first administration, said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. In 2018, Mr. Trump brought the rates of 10 to 25 percent to more than $ 350 billion in Chinese import, taxes that remain in force.
“They are still early days,” said Mr. Kennedy. “This should be seen as the floor of what is imposed, not the ceiling.”
Beijing has so far been careful with revenge and answers the first volley of Mr Trump rates with his own more limited number of own number. But it has indicated that it is willing to continue, possibly his dominance in the global supply chain to use exactly pain.
The Chinese delegation that Mr Cui included, had come to New York when the top diplomat of China, Wang Yi, visited the United Nations. Although Mr Wang did not go to Washington according to one source, the Chinese embassy helped to arrange meetings for Mr Cui in the capital of the nation.
Senior Communist Party Officaries, including Fang Xinghai, the former deputy head of the Chinese market regulator, and the economist Zhu Min, also traveled to Washington and met some members of the think tank community and the government.
The Chinese seem to explore the best contact points for their government. In the previous Trump government, the son-in-law of the president, Jared Kushner, served as an important in between, just like figures in the private sector. Recently the Chinese have investigated the role that Elon Musk – who has extensive business interests in China will play through Tesla – in the Trump government.
Private the Chinese have indicated the willingness to start negotiating a deal, but want to know that they have direct access to Mr. Trump.
“There seems to be a feeling that Beijing blames what happened on the bad communication channels,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China program in the Stimson Center, a research group in Washington.
Chinese academics and think tank officials have started driving different ideas for a trade agreement. One proposal is that the Chinese make major investments in the United States in areas such as electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels, which can create an estimated 500,000 American jobs, according to a person with direct knowledge of the proposal. In an unusual step, Chinese companies would be willing to license technology to American partners and keep minority interests in companies to limit concerns about national security, the person said.
Another provisional offer is the purchase of goods and services from the United States in agriculture, space travel, energy and possibly even technology. The Chinese have also proposed to buy more American treasury, and have purchased a concern that Mr Trump recently expressed a movement of a handful of countries, including China and Russia to create a new reserve currency that threatens the US dollar. The Chinese have proposed that Beijing could decrease that effort.
Chinese diplomats and academics have indicated that Beijing could also help the United States to reach a deal between Russia and Ukraine and help with the reconstruction of Ukraine.
In exchange, the Chinese have suggested that the United States should be committed to stabilizing the economic relationship. This can mean waiting for further rates and technological controls and enable more Chinese investments in the United States.
Given the national security problems in the United States about closer ties with China, it is not clear that the two parties can find an agreement on one of these issues. And some analysts say that the steps of Mr. Trump to rattles rates, making the mediation of the Chinese less likely, because Mr. Xi will not want to see as if he was going to Mr. Trump strives.
“We look for opportunities and the longer you wait, the more hostility there is in the Chamber and there is less time for both parties to reach an agreement,” said Mrs. Sun.
Minho Kim contributed reporting.
