U.S. President Donald Trump walks with China's Vice-President Han Zheng during a welcome ceremony on Wednesday at Beijing Capital International Airport.Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
The tables have turned since Donald Trump last travelled to Beijing to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in 2017. Then, the Communist Party Leader was eager to accommodate the new U.S. President, who had vowed to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices and force it to buy more stuff from America.
The meeting set the stage for a 2020 deal, known as the Phase One agreement, which required China to reform its economic and trade practices and increase annual purchases of U.S. goods and services by US$200-billion – almost none of which happened. Instead, China has since accelerated its mercantilist trade policy aimed at increasing exports and dominating global supply chains at the expense of domestic consumption.
“Beijing is actively reinforcing its control over value chains using regulations and economic coercion,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned in a report released this week as Mr. Trump prepared to leave for his second trip to China. “It has tightened controls on critical minerals and processing technologies, extended restrictions to downstream products through extraterritorial rules, and introduced new legal instruments that raise the cost for firms and governments seeking to diversify away from China.”
Robyn Urback: Donald Trump ignited an inferno, but now he’s bored of the flames
Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, the timing of his much-anticipated summit with Mr. Xi could hardly be worse. The U.S. President is on his back heels as the Iran war reinforces impressions of the United States as a declining superpower led by an erratic, impatient and, perhaps most tragically, non-strategic President.
Mr. Trump postponed his visit to China, originally slated for March, in the expectation he could successfully wrap up the Iranian intervention with a deal to end Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead, the opposite has happened as Mr. Trump’s desperation to end the war he started puts Mr. Xi in the driver’s seat, in spite of China’s dependence on constrained Iranian oil supplies.
Already, Beijing had showed its muscle last year after it cut off exports of rare-earth metals to the United States in retaliation against the 145-per-cent tariffs Mr. Trump had placed on Chinese imports. The U.S. President quickly backed down, earning him the TACO (Trump always chickens out) label that haunts him still.
China controls 90 per cent of the world’s refined rare earths, critical in advanced manufacturing of aircraft, semiconductors and automobiles. In a way, they have become to China what the Strait of Hormuz is to Iran. Just as the Islamic regime in Tehran has shown no qualms about shutting down the critical Persian Gulf waterway as a bargaining chip with Washington, China has displayed a similar willingness to weaponize rare earths.
China might not feel as emboldened had Mr. Trump not so thoroughly alienated allies, including Canada, that they now see Beijing as a source of global stability. As the United States abandons the rules-based order it created, its erstwhile allies rush to seek China’s favour.
Former U.S. president Joe Biden managed to co-ordinate Western policy toward China, particularly in sensitive technology sectors, including electric vehicles. But, in January, Prime Minister Mark Carney signalled an end to this common front by announcing a “new strategic partnership” with Beijing that opens Canada’s market to Chinese EVs in exchange for tariff relief on canola and other agri-food products.
“Ottawa’s concession showed Beijing that a U.S. ally spurned by Trump could be pressured to break ranks,” former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig, who was arbitrarily detained in China for almost three years, writes in a recent Foreign Affairs article.
The Editorial Board: The trade deal with China is not a leash
Opinion: Canada needs to be realistic about what it can get from China with its relations reset
Mr. Carney is just one of a host of Western leaders who have courted Mr. Xi in recent months. China’s suitors, Mr. Kovrig notes, have followed a similar script by participating in Mr. Xi’s “authoritarian pageantry” and foregoing any public criticism of Beijing’s human-rights abuses in exchange for limited short-term trade wins that boost their popularity at home.
“The United States’ partners, now hedging against a transactional Washington, are compelled to accommodate China. But deeper entanglement with China’s authoritarian state-capitalist system risks the greater danger: subordination to Beijing,” Mr. Kovrig warns. “By subordinating security and human rights to immediate commercial gain, these governments are exposing their citizens to foreign interference, arbitrary detention, and transnational repression, with diminishing prospects for recourse.”
Needless to say, that perspective is not the predominant view in Ottawa these days.
After meeting Premier Li Qiang in January, Mr. Carney declared: “I believe the progress we have made in the [Canada-China] partnership sets us up well for the new world order.”
Meet the new world order, same as the old order, except for the superpower atop it. That is one reason why Mr. Trump looks so much weaker on this trip to Beijing.