Picture the scene at noon on January 20 on the west side of the U.S. Capitol.
As Donald Trump vows to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution in the same place where his supporters rioted four years ago, an extraordinary VIP guest looks on, shadowing ex-presidents, military personnel and members of Congress.
Xi Jinping, China's hardline leader, has rallied to fend off the winter chill — the country almost everyone on the inaugural platform sees as an existential threat to the dominance of America's superpowers as the Cold War enters the 21st century continues to accelerate.
It's a fantastic image because even before sources confirmed on Thursday that Xi would not attend, it was clear that this could not happen, despite Trump's stunning invitation to the leader of the Chinese Communist Party for what he hopes is a second inauguration into a standout global leader. statement.
Flying Xi around the world would be a massive coup for the newly elected president – a fact that would make it politically unfeasible for the Chinese leader. Such a visit would put the Chinese president in the position of paying tribute to Trump and American power – which would conflict with his view of China's assumption of a rightful role as a preeminent global power. During the opening ceremony, Xi would be forced to listen to Trump without having any control over what the new president would say, while he would have no right of reply. Xi's presence would also be seen as a boost to a democratic transition of power — anathema to an autocrat in a one-party state obsessed with suppressing individual expression.
Still, Trump's invitation to Xi, even without a favorable response, marks an important development that sheds light on the newly elected president's confidence and ambition as he wields power ahead of his second term. CNN's team covering Trump reported that he has also asked other world leaders if they would come to the inauguration – in violation of convention.
This is a reminder of Trump's predilection for foreign policy through a grand gesture and his willingness to trample on diplomatic codes with his unpredictable approach. The Xi invitation also shows that Trump believes that only the strength of his personality can be a decisive factor in achieving diplomatic breakthroughs. He is far from the only president pursuing this approach — which rarely works as hostile U.S. adversaries make hard-nosed choices based on national interest rather than sentiment.
The president-elect's invitation to Xi is all the more interesting as he has worked in recent weeks to shape a foreign policy team that is very hawkish on China, including his pick for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, and for national security advisor. , Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, who sees China as a multi-front threat to the United States, economically, on the high seas and even in space.
“This is a very interesting move by Trump that fits very well with his practice of unpredictability. I don't think anyone expected this,” said Lily McElwee, deputy director and fellow in the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). McElwee said the invitation should be seen in the context of sticks and carrots the president-elect is wielding as he prepares to take over the world's most critical diplomatic relationship. “This is a very, very cheap carrot. It's a symbolic carrot – it kind of disrupts the tone of the relationship in a way that certainly doesn't undermine American interests.”
Trump's outreach to Xi comes as expectations grow that tense US-China relations will worsen in the incoming administration, with officials determined to build on an already hard line from the Biden administration , which built on a consolidation of policies during the first Trump term. .
The rivals are at odds over Taiwan, an island democracy that China considers part of its territory and which the United States may or may not defend if Xi orders an invasion. China is expanding its cooperation with other US enemies in an informal anti-Western axis alongside Russia, North Korea and Iran. Air and naval forces from the two main Pacific powers often come dangerously close to clashes in the South and East China Seas. And lawmakers in both parties accuse China of stealing American economic and military secrets and failing to comply with international law and trade rules.
Since Trump has already threatened to impose crushing tariffs on China, his attempt to lure Xi to Washington seems like a huge contradiction. And it raises another question as foreign governments wonder how to deal with the new U.S. president: How seriously should U.S. allies and adversaries take his bullying tone and volatile policy shifts? Is the real American approach characterized by its tough officials and policies, or is it more accurately represented by the president-elect's giddy moves, demonstrating a zeal for deals and sitting at the negotiating table with the world's tough leaders?
Trump's first big step in relations with China
Trump's latest move may feel chaotic, but that doesn't mean it can't work.
While Trump's critics often condemn his unpredictability, his out-of-the-box moves could throw rivals off balance and open up potential advantages for the US. For example, any success he achieves in dislodging Xi from China, Russia and North Korea would be a huge foreign policy victory, despite other U.S. differences with China.
But at the same time, one wonders whether the fire and fury of his foreign policy in the first term produced lasting results.
Trump's views on China are especially confusing – because he appears to believe that Beijing's mercantilist policies pose a direct threat to the US and that the country has been ripping America off for decades. But he still wants to be friends with Xi. During his campaign, Trump repeatedly emphasized that Xi was tough and smart and that they were friends — apparently believing that their cordiality meant the Chinese leader might have a similar opinion of him.
Trump expressed this contradiction in a single sentence Thursday in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC. “We've talked and discussed with President Xi, some things and other, other world leaders, and I think we'll do very well all around,” Trump said. But he added: “We have been abused as a country. From an economic point of view, we have been severely abused.”
Trump's habit of undermining his administration's hardline policies emerged repeatedly during his first term, especially with strongmen like Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Sometimes it seemed like he was taking positions simply because everyone told him not to.
One of Trump's former national security advisers, HR McMaster, noted in his book 'At War with Ourselves' that this was especially pronounced with Putin. “Like his predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Trump was overconfident in his ability to improve relations with the dictator in the Kremlin,” McMaster wrote. “Trump, the self-proclaimed 'expert dealmaker,' believed he could build a personal bond with Putin. Trump's tendency to be reflexively contrarian only added to his resolve. The fact that most foreign policy experts in Washington were calling for a tough approach to the Kremlin only seemed to drive the president to the opposite approach.”
Such contrarianism could motivate Trump in his early olive branch to Xi. And the president-elect could also foresee a new trade deal with Beijing, even if a first-term bilateral pact was largely a failure. The Phase One trade deal he struck in late 2019, which was hailed as “historic,” never materialized. While Trump turned sharply against Xi months later over the Covid-19 pandemic that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, it was never clear that Xi ever intended to fully implement what Trump claimed would be large-scale economic structural changes and massive purchases of American raw materials. agricultural, energy and industrial goods. There is no evidence that Xi has changed his mind.
Trump's tariff strategy is also in question, because no one knows whether a president who does not want to harm his base is willing to pay the political price that such an approach would entail. Despite his insistence that tariffs would ultimately cost Beijing billions, the higher import prices would be passed on by U.S. retailers to consumers — including voters who saw Trump as the best hope to reduce high grocery prices.
Another question: Does Trump see tariffs as a negotiating tactic or a real act of economic warfare? Many analysts believe his threats against allies such as Canada or the European Union are simply intended to improve his negotiating position. But antipathy to China in Washington is so strong that trade wars with Beijing could be more sustainable and an end in itself.
“With China, we still have a question mark about whether tariff threats are intended as bargaining leverage toward a deal, or whether they are aimed at some kind of unilateral decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies?” McElwee said.
Beijing appears to be taking Trump seriously. The weeks since Trump's election have been spent preparing instruments of retaliation. On Wednesday it announced an antitrust investigation against American chipmaker Nvidia. On another front of the technology war, China banned the export of several rare minerals to the United States. And on Thursday, the country pledged to widen the budget deficit, borrow more money and ease monetary policy to safeguard economic growth as a shield against new tensions with Trump.
This shows that a trade war could be disastrous for both China and America. While tariffs may raise prices in the U.S., they could dry up profits and exacerbate some of China's biggest economic vulnerabilities, including industrial overcapacity and low household demand.
Trump's unorthodox approach could therefore focus attention in Beijing.
Seen from this perspective, Trump's inaugural invitation looks like an opening chess move in a grand pan-Pacific game that will help define his second term.
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