Opinion | US-China trade talks: the five mistakes Trump’s team keeps making

Trump needs to learn some manners, resist the attempt to crow at concessions and stay in the background so negotiators can work behind closed doors

Crucially, the US should focus on market access and forced technology transfer instead of tariffs, and gather like-minded allies to approach China multilaterally

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US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer gestures as he talks to Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin looking on, on July 31 in Shanghai, China. Photo: AP

Published: 3:00am, 19 Oct 2019Updated: 3:38am, 19 Oct 2019

So China and the Donald Trump administration came out of last Friday’s talks with a “deal”. That is obviously good for the markets in the short term, but in the longer term nothing has been accomplished that is worth crowing about. Trump is like a man recovering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and thinks he has scored a victory. The major issues, from the US point of view – market access and forced technology transfer – remain unchanged.

Why? Because the Trump team makes the same five mistakes, over and over again.

First, he focuses on the wrong things. He should be concentrating on eliminating forced technology transfer and expanding market access. Instead, Trump seems to be focused on tariffs, which any good economist knows are a waste of time and energy. Tariffs hurt both parties, and accomplish nothing other than aggravating both governments’ major constituencies.

Second, as I discovered in my own efforts to set up the first joint venture between an American commercial bank and a Chinese one in the second decade of this millennium, Chinese negotiators are generally polite to each other. Even when they have the most difficult messages to deliver, in most cases, they do so politely.

Trump is overtly confrontational and often gratuitously insulting. In my experience, rudeness generates a desire to get even that can last for years.

Third, Trump assumes the foreground. This approach handcuffs the negotiators and results in Trump’s mistakes appearing larger than life. In China, the leader stays in the background and lets the negotiators do their work. When we were negotiating our joint-venture bank, we followed this time-honoured procedure.

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