In praise of the Donald Trump playbook, which will help the US score a victory over China, albeit temporarily
- Robert Delaney says Donald Trump deserves some credit for his China policies, which may well see Xi Jinping make concessions to the US at the G20 this week. Not that it means the US will succeed in keeping China down, though
Whatever Xi brings to the table will not be enough to return Sino-American relations to the relative stability of the few decades before Trump took office, but it should be more substantive than anything Beijing has offered since joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001.
The strategy Trump used to get whatever Xi will offer didn’t involve informed statecraft. It came from his one-page playbook for every challenge he faces: demand a better deal and hold everyone on all sides hostage until he can claim he has evened the score.
Trump has no apparent exit strategy for the trade war and seems content to let American multinationals figure out how to re-engineer complex global supply chains involving China, and so many resist the argument that he should be praised for his contretemps with Beijing.
It’s true that many American consumers and shareholders benefited from closer bilateral ties, but from a long-term strategic perspective, how do cheaper sweatshirts and fatter Boeing dividends compare with the broader-based rewards that could have been reaped if American companies had the kind of access to China’s market that Chinese companies have to America’s?
This question has been percolating through Washington for the past couple of years, and has solidified Trump’s case. Beijing feels it has no choice but to offer the US president something real on December 1, and the two sides are no doubt working behind the scenes to figure out what that something will be.
So Trump should be able to claim, rightly, that he did more to level the playing field with China than any of his predecessors. Unfortunately, as many analysts have been predicting recently, this victory will fade quickly as fundamental differences prevent the kind of reforms sought by Trump’s team, as well as others in US policymaking circles from all points of the ideological spectrum.
Robert Zoellick, a former World Bank president and US trade representative, worked with members of China’s State Council to spell out the reforms that would put the market at the centre of the country’s economy.
“China’s strategy toward the world,” the report added, “will need to be governed by a few key principles: open markets, fairness and equity, mutually beneficial cooperation, global inclusiveness and sustainable development”.
So let’s give a cheer for Trump. You won’t need to keep it up for long.
Robert Delaney is the Post's US bureau chief, based in New York