China must help the White House save Trump from himself

Despite the rhetoric of Donald Trump’s election campaign, including calling the US trade deficit with China equivalent to “rape,” the Chinese may feel relations with the US are going surprisingly well, now that Trump is president. There was the “successful” Mar-a-Lago summit in April; and Trump himself is set for a state visit in November.

If Beijing was worried that Trump might take up Barack Obama’s “rebalance to Asia” in earnest, there is plenty of evidence that the US remains as mired in the Middle East as ever. Trump has just reversed his criticism of the war in Afghanistan and is doubling down. He’s laying plans to improve deteriorated relations with Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok – to offset growing Chinese influence – but two key guided missile destroyers are out of action in the Pacific fleet due to accidents, making the US look weaker.

Trump abandoned the one strategically sensible region-wide mechanism for competing economically with China, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), leaving Beijing to organise regional trade according to its preferences. His withdrawal from the Paris climate accord then ceded moral authority to China.

Trump returned to the “one-China policy” after a phone call with Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, left his stand in doubt, but later conflated actions on trade, Taiwan, North Korea and the South China Sea, in reaction to Beijing’s perceived weakness on pressurising Pyongyang. Normally, each of these issue sets is handled on its own terms and not together, to keep them from becoming unmanageable. China’s reaction was accordingly muted.

The White House backed away from national-security-based sanctions on iron and steel, possibly because they were intended to be aimed at China’s industries but may have hit other trading partners harder. But Trump issued an executive order Section 301 investigation of China’s intellectual property rights violations under the 1974 Trade Act, including forced sharing of proprietary secrets to participate in Chinese markets. Trade representative Robert Lighthizer has started the process, and concern about the issue is shared broadly, not just by Trump’s political base. Action is probably a year away.