Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. June 10, 2025 |
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China Didn't Come Begging Trump |
American and Chinese negotiators have met for trade talks in London this week as President Donald Trump's tariff war proceeds in fits and starts. A partial truce announced last month, after talks in Geneva, has been snarled by Chinese rare-earth-mineral export controls (which Beijing had agreed to suspend) and the bureaucratic queue for licenses to start shipments to US buyers, Andrew Polk and Trey McArver explained last week on the podcast of Trivium, their China-focused policy-analysis firm.
How are negotiations going so far? "[N]ot how America imagined," The Economist writes. "After Mr Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on April 2nd, he said countries were 'kissing his ass' to make trade deals. China took a different approach, matching his tariffs tit-for-tat. … Although their retaliatory tariffs did not hurt America much in themselves, they provoked Mr Trump into a wild cycle of escalation that threatened economic agony for both countries. America decided it could not live with the self-inflicted pain, sparing China, too."
Indeed, as The Economist writes, Beijing has appeared willing to take risks in the face of Trump's threats. Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other top officials "harbor no illusion that China can win a trade war with the United States," Zongyuan Zoe Liu of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in a Foreign Affairs essay in April. "But they are willing to risk one that Trump might lose." As for where talks might end up, The Economist concludes: "Neither America nor China is in a position to rout its economic adversary. Each remains dependent on the other, albeit in different ways. That reality, always clear to China, should now be obvious to both sides. Neither of them will achieve a decisive victory; nor will they disarm. More likely they will keep mobilising and demobilising their economic arsenals to keep the other in check." Note to readers: The Global Briefing will be on hiatus Wednesday and Thursday this week. We'll return to your inboxes on Friday. |
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Some argue Trump's tariff war can reshape global trade in a way that benefits America, even if it costs the US economy in the short run. Writing in a Foreign Affairs essay, Emily Kilcrease and Geoffrey Gertz of the Center for a New American Security, a DC-based think tank, see a chance "to negotiate a reset of the [global] trading system" and work toward "a future order made up of the following concentric circles: deep economic and security integration for close allies and partners; predictable, rules-based exchange among most countries; and careful de-risking from competitors."
Still, Tufts international-politics professor Daniel Drezner noted on Friday in his Drezner's World newsletter that, like China, other countries do not appear to be rushing to offer Trump any major concessions. Last week, a new White House deadline for tariff counterproposals from other countries came and went, Drezner wrote. And still, "the only news stories are about just how gosh-darn difficult it is to negotiate a trade deal. … Maybe the Trump administration will surprise its doubters and hammer out an array of bilateral trade deals in the remaining month before the 90-day pause expires—but I doubt it. Maybe [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent and [Commerce Secretary] Howard Lutnick will pull multiple rabbits out of a hat and rewrite the global trading system in a manner favorable to U.S. economic interests—but I doubt it." |
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The Key to a Good US–China Deal: Chinese Factories in the US? |
As US–China trade talks continue, some are looking for incremental progress. Trivium's Polk and McArver noted on their podcast Trump's phone call with Xi last week, which Trump said went well. Xi invited Trump to China, which could bode positively for negotiations: with that to look forward to, talks are more likely to advance toward a trade announcement each leader could tout as a win after an official visit, Polk and McArver pointed out.
Still, doubts linger as to whether Washington and Beijing will make any meaningful progress—or any meaningful deal in the end. Much of America's consternation about trade with China involves military production, Polk and McArver noted. Tensions could calm once the US is able to source critical materials, like rare-earth minerals, that can be used in high-tech military applications. The problem, both the podcasters and The Economist point out, is that it will take a long time for that to happen.
The US and China may ultimately reach a relatively meager deal, much like the "Phase One" agreement they announced during Trump's first presidency—in which Beijing pledged to buy more US goods, and Washington eased its tariffs—according to longtime China watcher Arthur Kroeber, head of research at Gavekal Dragonomics, who suggested as much last month to Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast hosts, Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway.
Another possibility appeals to multiple commentators as the best way to make a meaningful economic pact, unlikely as it may be: allowing more Chinese investment—and factories—into the US.
"One of the things that [Chinese officials] really want, that could be given to them, is the ability for their companies to invest a lot more in the United States," Kroeber said, pointing to Chinese electric-vehicle giant BYD and battery giant CATL. "All of these Chinese high-tech firms, they would love to be able to invest in the United States and tap into this market more directly. They would be very happy to accept, I think, a lot of different potential structures for that investment, but effectively Chinese companies are shut out. And Trump, on the campaign trail, said that he was open to this."
So, Chinese EVs being made in the American Midwest? "[I]f you're serious about reindustrializing the United States, you cannot do that without significant participation by China," Kroeber argued. "It is as absurd for us to think that we can ramp up our industrialization without China as it … would have been [40 years ago] for China to think that they could ramp up their industrialization without bringing in the leaders then, the US, Japan and Germany."
Trump likes to boast of investments, and the Trivium podcasters Polk and McArver imagine a White House web page touting tens of billions of dollars' worth of manufacturing investments made in the US by BYD and CATL. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman made the same suggestion on The Ezra Klein Show podcast in April: leverage market access to demand Chinese firms make their goods (and source the components) in the US.
In Bloomberg's Odd Lots newsletter, Dan Wang also sees potential benefits, writing that when Apple moved its manufacturing to China, that "pushed Apple's market cap into the trillions. China, if anything, gained even more." And yet, Wang agrees with Kroeber that it's all quite unlikely. "The politics of that has been a tough sell in America," Wang writes. "A Chinese batterymaker has had a hard time setting up a factory in Michigan. Several states have restricted Chinese companies and citizens from buying even farmland. And Congress is generally hostile to Chinese investment." In the end, "Trump and Xi might, perhaps, come to [a much more limited] agreement to trade American market access for Chinese technology transfers and workforce training." |
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America's CEOs once felt free to criticize the government. But today, despite tariff chaos and a deficit-ballooning budget bill, business leaders are saying almost nothing in the face of Trump's tsunami of economic uncertainty, Fareed pointed out on Sunday's GPS. |
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Trump's last presidential campaign infamously made transgender rights a tentpole of its public messaging. A prominent TV ad insisted opponent and then-Vice President Kamala Harris was "for they/them," while Trump was "for you."
In office, The Atlantic's Helen Lewis writes, Trump and his administration have gone even further, "issuing a series of executive orders and official statements that depict trans people as innately deluded, duplicitous, or dishonorable. … Look at the language of one of Trump's early executive orders, which prohibits trans people from serving in the military. The 'adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life,' a January 27 order declares. … It should be possible to express concern about trans-rights groups' most dogmatic positions without being shouted down. But that does not also mean signing up to the premise that transgender Americans are inherently unworthy of basic respect. Under [former President Joe] Biden, the left went too far into bad and unpopular gender-identity policies. Under Trump, the same is true of the right." |
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