Can the US president, Donald Trumpto be happy with the result of US -China trade talks in London, but Si Jinping left with a depreciated strategic gain: a negotiating process that saves time in China And it helps to relieve the threat of more harmful duties and technological restrictions.
Shortly after the two -day negotiations were completed, Trump said on Wednesday (11.6.2025) on social media that an agreement was made to restore the flow of critical magnets from China and pledged to lift the restrictions on entry entry visas. A few hours earlier, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnik revealed that Washington would solve its recent technological limitations, if specialized metals necessary for US car and defense companies have now been fast enough.
China’s placement was very different. A People’s Daily comment on Thursday (12.6.2025) made no reference to export checks. Instead, the Communist Party’s transparency praised an “institutional guarantee” created in Geneva for both sides to bridge the differences through a “consultation mechanism”. In a long -awaited phone call from leaders before London’s negotiations, Si explained to Trump the importance of using this channel, he added.
This contrast demonstrates disconnection in the way in which the world’s largest economies want to manage their commercial dispute and their wider relationship with the train of terror. While Trump seeks quick agreements that are made directly with the leading leaders, Si prefers a framework under the guidance of his deputy commander -in -chief from not being blind. Such bargains could have been drawn for years, with the “first phase” agreement from the first trade war, lasting most of Trump’s first term.
“Si plays a long game for the US-China trade. The time of his term is simply much longer than that of Trump, “said Christopher Boder, Deputy Chief of Research for China in Gavekal Research. “This does not mean that there is never a short -term thought, but the lack of term of office is very different in motivation than for Trump.”
While the slow course of the negotiations gives China the opportunity to evaluate how hard Trump is negotiating with other nations, prolonged uncertainty is bad for businesses, he added.
Si showed last week that he could be flexible, calling Trump as the ties fell into the Tartars, escaping the protocol to organize such an interaction. In the time of Biden, then national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Foreign Minister Wang to meet foreign locations for days before their leaders spoke directly, managing results and expectations.
While Geneva’s talks last month ended with an identical US-China statement, indicating a degree of alignment, the deal quickly collapsed due to US allegations that China has been promising to release rare land missions. Beijing states that it always had the intention of maintaining a licensing process, for which US companies complained that it was so slow that some factories were forced to stop production.
The lack of detailed recognition on each side this time has left a lot of doubt, including what Peken pledged to do about exporting specialized metals used in anything, from fighter aircraft to electric vehicles.
Lutnik told CNBC on Wednesday that China is going to approve “all applications for magnets from US companies right away” – a sweeping claim that seemed to leave a lot of room for frustration.
Chinese spokesman He Yadong pledged that his country “will fully examine the reasonable needs and concerns of all countries in the political sector”, in regular information in Beijing on Thursday, adding that approval work is being reinforced.
“The Chinese motivation is also to keep their papers closed and not make many declarations about what they have or have not been committed,” said Arthur Crueber, a founding partner and head of the research in Gavekal. “There is a lot of room for them under the whole export licensing regime.”
One approach could be the reboot of several export licenses so as not to prevent shoppers’ non -commercial buyers, but not so much that businesses can store, thus alleviating Beijing’s future influence, he added.
Trump told social media that China is now facing a 55%charge, which seems to include contributions that were introduced during its first presidency. It also combines a basic 10% duty imposed by Trump and a 20% tax linked to the trafficking of fentanyl – an area in which Beijing was considered to have had room for negotiation if it enhanced control of its companies.
Lutnik raised doubts about this and questions about the nature of future negotiations, saying that duties in China will remain “certain” at their current level. This suggests that a 90 -day pause was set to expire in August for the 145% of Trump’s general rate was now unaware. Such a position also weakens the incentive for Beijing to provide concessions to future commercial conversations if duties cannot be moved.
While China has felt pain from US contributions, with exports to the world’s largest economy fell 34% in May, Trump seems to be in a hurry to reach an agreement.
His government is confronted with the July 9th deadline in order to either conclude agreements with dozens of global trading partners or re -impose sweeping duties. In a sign of the growing impatience of the Republican leader, he warned on Wednesday that he will soon send letters to countries that will say: “This is the deal, you can take it or leave it.”
Showing this willingness to keep things in motion, Trump’s team, in a rare move this week, put export controls on the negotiating table – previously, these tools were justified with concerns about national security and were largely out of bounds.
The weakening of this rationale could open the door to more cooperation and promote Trump’s proclaimed goal of “opening China to American trade”. However, China is unlikely to agree on large markets of goods competing in areas where Beijing seeks to build self -sufficiency and cultivate its own national champions.
The re -examination of their economies, an idea promoted by US Finance Minister Scott Bessed, could include attracting more Chinese investment to the US. The Trump government could prevent many Chinese companies from throwing money into the US economy, even if Si encouraged them to do so.
Taking these issues will take time, possibly requiring long -term discussions with the use of the mechanism that China and the US have included in what Beijing called their “hard -won” agreement.
“Some say the result of London’s talks was just a framework,” said Zhu Junwei, a former popular liberation army researcher, who is now director of US investigations at the Grandview Institution in Beijing. “It’s better to have a framework than to have nothing.”