United States President-elect Donald Trump has thus fired off his first salvo in China's direction. On Monday, November 25 – eight weeks before his January 20 inauguration – he announced that he would impose a 10% tariff on Chinese products. China, as the world's leading exporter, has seen this as confirmation of Trump's hostility toward it, but it is, thus far, waiting to see what transpires, especially since the Republican politician had also promised, while on the campaign trail, to tax Chinese products at 60%.
Beijing has also noted that the 47th US president has announced a 25% increase in tariffs on imports coming from Mexico and Canada, suggesting that it may not be the primary target for the time being. "No one will win a trade war," said Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington.
In reality, China has been struggling to read the Republican's intentions. The series of appointments announced by Trump since his election has done little to clarify things. On Tuesday, November 26, he appointed trade lawyer Jamieson Greer as US trade representative, an official who worked alongside his predecessor Robert Lighthizer, who has a highly protectionist approach. Greer and other proponents of rebalancing trade and jobs will find themselves working alongside politicians who are far more ideologically opposed to China, including proposed Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is obsessed with the Chinese Communist regime's very existence. They will also have to collaborate with figures who are much more "business as usual," including potential Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund boss, or the world's richest man, Elon Musk, both of whom have an interest in maintaining some form of stability.
Close ties with the Brazilian president
China anticipates that it will encounter elements of all these factions within Trump's policy positions. Compared to the beginning of his first term (2017-2021), the country is now much better prepared. It has already experienced his particularly destabilizing strategy of shock and uncertainty, and observed that he hadn't derailed its economy during his first four years in office.
Since then, China's president, Xi Jinping, has constantly insisted on the quest for "scientific and technological autonomy." In response to the restrictions imposed against Huawei in 2019, the telecoms champion has shifted away from using Google's Android operating software in order to develop its own, called Harmony. An improved version was launched in a new smartphone on Tuesday, November 26. Joe Biden's administration then blocked Chinese groups' access to the latest generation of electronic chips manufactured by the Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC. However, a rival Shanghai chip supplier, SMIC, is now closing the quality gap.
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