In the midst of a Trump-designed trade war, President Xi Jingping and a group of Chinese officials visited D.C. to lay the groundwork for a new trade agreement. What they found was a bungling group of ‘keystone cops’ who were incapable of showing a unified front—and the Chinese took full advantage of the Trump administration’s incompetence. The New York Times summarized the meetings thusly:
By the time American negotiators wrapped up high-level talks with a visiting Chinese delegation last week, President Trump’s ambitions for a multibillion-dollar trade agreement had, for the time being, shriveled into a blandly worded communiqué without any dollar figures. It was not clear that the talks set a path to success.
Ceaseless infighting and jockeying for influence on the White House’s trade team helped deprive Mr. Trump of a quick victory on his most cherished policy agenda, several people involved in the talks said. The deep internal divisions carried over into how officials characterized the agreement and muddied the outlook for the next phase of the negotiations between Washington and Beijing.
The internal divisions of Trump’s White House staff and Cabinet have been simmering for months. Earlier this year in Beijing, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro had a heated argument in front of Chinese officials:
During that trip, Mr. Mnuchin agreed to a private meeting with China’s top economic official, Liu He, without Mr. Navarro or any other members of the American delegation. He and Mr. Navarro stepped outside to engage in a profanity-laced shouting match, an unmistakable demonstration to the Chinese of their deep differences of opinions. Mr. Mnuchin sought to play down tensions between the American officials, saying on CNBC that Mr. Navarro was “an important part of the team.”
Swell. Nice united front you put on there, fellas. Worse than that, the NYT notes the Chinese officials could tell Donald Trump was desperate for any type of a ‘symbolic’ victory that could be trumpeted as a win for himself. So, the Chinese made a few concessions and Trump gave away the farm.
In return for concessions, the Chinese were expecting the administration to offer relief to the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE, which had been crippled by national security sanctions that prevented it from buying any American technology.
ZTE pleaded guilty to criminal charges after they were busted illegally shipping telecommunications equipment to Iran. The sanctions haven’t been officially lifted yet because Trump received a tremendous amount of negative backlash from both parties over the ZTE agreement. Most experts are slamming the deal. From the Washington Post:
Some analysts said the president was abandoning his goal of a comprehensive overhaul in the U.S.-China trading relationship in return for minor Chinese commitments.
“The administration has done an about-face in its approach on trade with China,” said Scott Kennedy, an expert on Chinese business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He added: “China has been let off the hook, and although ‘reforms’ are coming, they are likely to be modest, gradual and incremental. All the while, the party-state will continue to fully draw on all of its industrial policy tools to promote Chinese national champions at home and abroad.”
Can you smell the Trump desperation from here? Putting aside the ZTE concessions, another diplomatic expert picked apart the Trump-led negotiating tactics and trade delegation. In short, they did absolutely everything wrong. Here’s the breakdown from Ilan Goldenberg, a former senior staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a current senior fellow and director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
One last noteworthy take on these negotiations comes from American political scientist Iam Bremmer, who notes the age difference in China’s trade team versus those negotiating on behalf of the U.S.
It could take years, possibly even decades to undo the damage of the Trump negotiations and this ragtag team of grifters.