ANALYSIS || “This is a very interesting move by Trump that fits very well with his practice of unpredictability”
Xi’s response is an affront to Trump, but the invitation to the inauguration remains important
analysis of Stephen CollinsonCNN
Imagine the scene at 12:00 on January 20, 2025 on the west front of the US 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, upstaging former presidents, military personnel and members of Congress.
Bundled up to ward off the winter chill is Xi Jinping, the hardline leader of China – the country that almost everyone in the inaugural podium sees as an existential threat to the dominance of the American superpower, as the 21st century cold war rages on. speed up.
It’s a fanciful picture, because even before sources confirmed on Thursday that Xi would not attend the ceremony, it was obvious that it could not happen, despite Trump’s stunning invitation to the Chinese Communist Party leader for a second inauguration that he hopes to turn it into a landmark global statement.
Making Xi cross the world by plane would be a stroke of genius for the President-elect – a fact that makes the invitation 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 legitimate role as a pre-eminent world power. At the inauguration ceremony, Xi would be forced to sit and listen to Trump without having any control over what the new president could say and without the right to respond. Xi’s presence would also be seen as supporting a democratic transfer of power — anathema to an autocrat in a one-party state obsessed with crushing individual expression.
Still, even without a favorable response, Trump’s invitation to Xi marks a significant development that sheds light on the president-elect’s confidence and ambition as he wields power ahead of his second term. The CNN team covering Trump reported that he has also been asking other world leaders if they want to attend the inauguration – in a break with convention.
This is reminiscent of Trump’s fondness for foreign policy through grand gestures and his willingness to trample diplomatic codes with his unpredictable approach. The invitation to Xi also shows that Trump believes that the strength of his personality can, in itself, be a decisive factor in forging diplomatic advances. He is far from the only president to take this approach — which rarely works, as America’s hostile adversaries make tough choices based on national interest rather than vibes.
The president-elect’s invitation to Xi is all the more interesting because Trump has spent the past few weeks building a foreign policy team that is deeply aggressive toward China – examples include his selection of Florida Senator Marco Rubio as one of his secretaries of state. (which in the US are the equivalent of ministries in Portugal) and Florida congressman Mike Waltz for national security advisor, who see China as a multifaceted threat to the United States at the economic level, 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 that,” says Lily McElwee, deputy director and Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Lily McElwee considers that the invitation must be seen in the context of the sticks and carrots that the President-elect is using as he prepares to assume the most important diplomatic relationship in the world. “This is a very, very cheap carrot. It’s a symbolic carrot — it somewhat disrupts the tone of the relationship in a way that certainly doesn’t hurt U.S. interests.”
Trump’s rapprochement with Xi comes as expectations rise that tense relations between the US and China will worsen further in the next Administration, with officials determined to build on an already tough line adopted by the Biden administration, which was based on in a tightening of policy during Trump’s first term.
The US and China are at loggerheads over Taiwan, a democratic island that Beijing considers part of its territory and which the US may or may not defend if Xi orders an invasion. China is increasing its cooperation with other US enemies in an informal anti-Western axis, along with Russia, North Korea and Iran. The air and naval forces of the two major Pacific powers often come dangerously close to clashes in the South and East China Seas. Lawmakers from both parties accuse China of stealing U.S. economic and military secrets and failing to respect international law and trade rules.
Since Trump has already threatened to impose crushing tariffs on China, his attempt to persuade Xi to come to Washington seems like a huge contradiction. And it raises the following question, at a time when foreign governments are wondering how to deal with the new US President: how seriously should US allies and adversaries take his intimidating tone and volatile policies? Is the true American approach characterized by its hard-line officials and policies, or is it more accurately represented by the president-elect’s head movements, which reveal a zeal for compromise and for sitting at the negotiating table with the world’s toughest leaders? ?
Trump’s first big move in relations with China
This move by Trump may seem chaotic – but that doesn’t mean it can’t work.
Although Trump’s critics often condemn his unpredictability, his improvised actions could throw rivals off balance and open up potential advantages for the US. For example, any success Trump has in alienating Xi from Iran, Russia and North Korea would be a huge foreign policy victory, despite other U.S. disagreements with China.
But at the same time, it is fair to question whether the foreign policy fire and fury of his first term produced lasting results.
Trump’s views on China are especially mixed – since he appears to believe that Beijing’s mercantilist policies are a direct threat to the US and that China has been stealing from the United States for decades. But he still wants to be friends with Xi. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly emphasized that Xi was tough and smart and that they were friends – appearing to believe that his warmth means the Chinese leader might feel similarly about Trump.
Trump expressed this contradiction in a single sentence, in an interview with Jim Cramer, on CNBC, this Thursday. “We have talked and discussed some things with President Xi and talked and discussed others with other world leaders. I think we’re going to do really well.” But he added: “We have been mistreated as a country. We have been very badly treated from an economic point of view.”
Trump’s habit of undermining his administration’s tough policies was repeatedly evident in his first term, especially with strongmen like Xi, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kim Jong Un. At times, it seemed like Trump took positions simply because everyone told him not to.
One of Trump’s former national security advisors, HR McMaster, writes in his book “At War with Ourselves” that this situation was especially pronounced under Putin. “Like his predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Trump was very confident in his ability to improve relations with the Kremlin dictator. Trump, a self-described ‘negotiation expert’, believed he could build a personal relationship with Putin. The fact that most foreign policy experts in Washington advocated a tough approach to the Kremlin only seemed to lead the president to take the opposite approach.”
The President-elect may now be envisioning a new trade deal with Beijing, even though a bilateral pact in his first term was a failure. The trade deal that Trump concluded in late 2019, hailed as “historic,” never materialized. Although Trump turned sharply against Xi months later over the Covid-19 pandemic – which began in the Chinese city of Wuhan – it was never clear that Xi intended to fully implement what Trump claimed was large-scale economic structural change and massive purchases. of US agricultural, energy and manufactured products. There is no indication that Xi has changed his mind.
Trump’s tariff strategy is also in question because no one knows whether a President reluctant to harm his base is willing to pay the political price that such an approach would imply. Despite Trump’s insistence that customs duties would ultimately cost Beijing billions, higher import prices would be passed on by American retailers to consumers – including voters who saw Trump as the best hope for easing inflation.
Another question: Does Trump see the tariffs as a negotiating tactic or as a true act of economic warfare? Many analysts think his threats against allies like Canada or the European Union are simply intended to improve his negotiating position. But Washington’s antipathy toward China is such that trade wars with Beijing could be more long-lasting and an end in themselves.
“In relation to China, we still have doubts about whether the tariff threats are intended to serve as negotiating leverage for an agreement or whether they are aimed at a kind of unilateral decoupling of the US and Chinese economies”, points out Lily McElwee, deputy director and Fellow of the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Beijing appears to be taking Trump seriously. He has spent the weeks since the election preparing tools of retaliation. On Wednesday, it announced an antitrust investigation into US-based chipmaker Nvidia. On another front in the technological war, China has banned the export of several rare minerals to the United States. And on Thursday, he promised to increase the fiscal deficit, borrow more money and ease monetary policy to safeguard economic growth as a shield against new tensions under Trump.
This shows that a trade war could be disastrous for both China and the United States. While customs duties can drive up prices in the U.S., they can dry up profits and exacerbate some of China’s biggest economic vulnerabilities, including industrial overcapacity and low household demand.
So Trump’s unorthodox approach may be starting to focus Beijing’s attention.
From this perspective, Trump’s inaugural invitation appears to be an opening chess move in a grand pan-Pacific game that will help define his second term.
