China’s Not Our Friend, But…

We urge the United States to cancel immediately sanctions on Chinese companies including Huawei to push for the healthy and stable development in Sino-U.S. ties. 

 China’s Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng Gao

The collateral damage is spreading…The impact of any further deterioration of the relationship will not be limited to these two major powers. 

 Australia’s PM, Scott Morrison

The hottest country in the world right now is the United States and everybody wants a part of it…  We have a lot of time…There’s no rush, they can take their time. There is absolutely no time pressure. Hopefully in the end it’s going to work out. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, you’ll be hearing about it.  

Donald Trump

China is just one failing effort. Donald Trump is playing a hand that gets weaker by the day. As the world looks on in horror, Trump baits and prods Iran’s leaders, threatens them with obliteration and amps up sanctions for Iranian leaders (who truly do not care, have no bank accounts and do not travel) as well as nations and companies that continue to do business with Tehran. But it was Donald Trump who abrogated the American commitment to the six-party Iran nuclear containment accord, a flawed treaty that at least halted Iran’s nuclear program as verified by an extensive U.N. inspection. 

The remaining treaty nations are struggling with how to keep that accord intact, while Trump does everything he can to undermine its effectiveness. His use of American domination of the global financial market has caused European allies, who resent his bullying economic tactics against them for doing what the treaty was intended to do, has forced his allies into using alternative financial structures to circumvent Trump. 

His pledge to secure a better treaty from Iran remains, as expected, another dismal foreign policy failure. Paralleling his “peace plan” for Palestine, that was laughed into meaninglessness at the recent Bahrain conference (boycotted by the Palestinian contingent). His “nothing in it for the United States” unilateral concessions in Israel – moving our embassy to a hotly contested Jerusalem and recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights – have further isolated the United States from most of the rest of the world. 

Or that his efforts to close our border to asylum-seeking refugees, in contravention of global law, have resulted in both an increase of Central Americans at our gates and a litany of events of mistreatment of detainees, especially of children already separated from their parents (the “zero tolerance” effect). Death and pain at the border provide unending photographic evidence to the rest of the world of Trump-America’s newfound proclivity towards raw cruelty. Failure. Just like his promise of an elusive denuclearization accord with North Korea as Kim Jong Un cozies up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Just like Trump’s tariff and trade war with Beijing. 

Ah, China… We don’t even have a military advantage anymore. While our massive military might, far greater than that of the Peoples’ Republic, is spread thin all over the world, China has focused on regional power. Korea, the Philippines and Japan have taken notice and are moving accordingly. Most of Asia is under their growing influence, underlined by their Belt and Road Initiative. We don’t matter much anymore.

Fact: while China is definitely open to a balanced negotiated trade agreement with the United States – our economic bullets are truly hurting both them… and us – if Xi Jinping were truly to accept most of the concessions demanded by Trump, his political life would be over. Since China is not a democracy, rather a centrally-directed state, President Xi is using that power to defy American demands – other than normal trade concessions – even if his people and his economy suffer. He will not self-destruct to placate Donald Trump and his out-of-touch base.

One of Donald Trump greatest philosophical weaknesses, a dramatic tragic flaw in international relations, is his application of generic business practices – The Art of the Deal – to foreign policy. In a world where multiparty trade agreements are the rule – companies today are multinational, manufacturing often aggregates components made in many different countries – Donald Trump only understands one-on-one negotiations. 

Trump’s dramatic ignorance of economics (he did not do well in those college courses), ignoring the history of failure when relying on tariffs, is truly horrifying. Strategically, he believes that America’s bargaining power should not be diluted in a multiparty negotiation with many nations. A bully needs to be able to focus bullying-power on a lone negotiating “opponent” on the other side of the table. And guess how those “opponents” (vs “trading partners”) respond to such tactics? It’s just not how the world works in a modern era. 

For weeks, Trump has been touting his “special relationship” with China’s Xi, suggesting that the two men can just sit down and finalize a bilateral trade agreement. That sit-down was basically going to take place at the G-20 meeting, now rolling along in Osaka, Japan. Don’t hold your breath. An isolated and internationally disliked Donald Trump is not bringing home the bacon.

As world leaders gather, “expectations for significant progress are remarkably low, even within the [Trump] administration. During a White House briefing for reporters, a senior administration official, speaking anonymously under the briefing ground rules, noted that Trump’s planned meeting with Putin is ‘not a formal summit’ and that, while the conversation will probably focus on regional security matters, there is no official agenda.

“The lowered prospects reflect how much less of a role multilateral institutions and meetings have in the Trump era. They also highlight the administration’s lack of clearly articulated foreign policy goals. Trump has repeatedly suggested that improved U.S. ties with Moscow would be a good thing, for example, but has never made clear what he hopes to gain.

“The personality-driven nature of Trump’s diplomacy is familiar by now. He relishes the global spotlight, toggling between tough talk and effusive praise for other leaders, and often expresses confidence that the most intractable geopolitical problems can be resolved by building strong personal relationships… But well into the third year of his norm-shattering presidency, there is scant proof that works…

“Rather than trying to build a consensus among multiple heads of state, Trump tends to view these group meetings mostly as an opportunity to hold a series of one-on-one discussions. This time, he plans to hold bilateral meetings with at least eight leaders.

“In addition to his expected meeting with Putin on Friday [6/28], the most attention probably will be on his expected sit-down Saturday with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a time when the trade war between the two countries appears to be at an impasse.” Los Angeles Times, June 27^th. 

Trump is telling increasingly skeptical Americans that the additional renewed pressure of blacklisting Chinese companies and limiting how U.S. companies can deal with them will force China to do what he promised they would do. He is telling hapless farmers in mid-America, slammed with both massive flooding (ah, but Mr. Trump cares not to try and address the cause – man-induced climate change) and sales losses from the effective closure of the Chinese market due to Trump’s trade war – that this tact is sure to work. It won’t.

The quotes above, dealing with the U.S. trade war with China, tell you just how far Trump’s reality veers from reality. There are no winners, and the longer this impasse continues, the list of losers grows. When a trade agreement is ultimately consummated, sooner or later, it will reflect a negotiated trade balance. Trump will undoubtedly ignore his being forced to compromise and brag about the “best trade agreement with China ever negotiated.” Right. China is a small and weak country that must do as Donald Trump wishes. And I am the Easter Bunny. 

              I’m Peter Dekom, and reality seems to be particularly unpopular with the Trump administration.