China is secretly worried Trump will win on trade

Soon after Donald Trump won the presidential election in November, Xi Jinping asked his aides to urgently analyze the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.

His concern, according to people who consult with senior Chinese officials, was that as President Trump gears up for a showdown with Beijing, China could get isolated like Moscow during that era.

He’s not wrong to worry. Even though Trump may be the one who currently looks isolated on the world stage—picking trade fights with erstwhile allies like Mexico and Canada, alarming Europe over his handling of the war in Ukraine and vowing to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal—the truth is that China doesn’t hold a strong hand.

With a domestic economy in crisis, Xi is playing defense, hoping to salvage as much as possible of a global trade system that helped pull his country out of poverty. Across the Pacific, Trump is intent on rewiring that very trading system, which he and his advisers see as having benefited the rest of the world—and China most of all—at the U.S.’s expense.

It isn’t just trade. The competing agendas of the leaders of the world’s two largest economies are poised to lead to precisely what China is trying to avoid: a superpower clash not seen since the Cold War, an all-encompassing rivalry over economic, technological and overall geopolitical supremacy.

Trump, who highlighted the need to counter China throughout his campaign, returned to the White House with a comfortable victory and Republican control of Congress. He believes he can deal with Beijing from a position of strength, advisers said.

Many of his early diplomatic moves should be viewed in that context, these people said. Trump is trying to end the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine to better focus on China, they said. His recent enthusiastic embrace of Russia and its authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, is propelled in part by a strategic desire to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing.

One reason Trump wants U.S. control of the Panama Canal is that he sees the Chinese infrastructure that has been built up there in the past three decades as a national-security threat. On Tuesday, he notched a victory of sorts, when a consortium of investors led by U.S. asset management firm BlackRockagreed to buy majority stakes in ports on either end of the Panama Canal from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison.

“All the stuff he’s doing is so that we can put more resources” to counter China, an administration official said.

Trump on Tuesday added to existing tariffs on China, citing its role in the fentanyl crisis in the U.S., surprising Chinese officials who were still trying to figure out how to approach what they see as an erratic U.S. leader.

China, which itself has tried to reshape the global order, aligning itself with Russia to challenge the West, now finds itself on the back foot. The vision haunting Xi is one where China finds itself cut off by trade restrictions and sanctions, suffering Soviet-style isolation with fewer outlets for its goods and limited access to crucial technologies.

“Now China is in danger of becoming the target of a similar rivalry,” one of the people who consult with Beijing said. “Xi believes that must be avoided.”

What complicates Beijing’s efforts at shaping its strategy toward the U.S. is the difficulty in getting Trump’s core team to engage. China hasn’t been a primary focus for Trump in his first weeks. His near-term priorities have been on fixing illegal immigration, slashing government spending and ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

While Xi is waiting for clarity on what the U.S. wants from Beijing, his economic team is preparing ways to hit back at Trump.

Since November, China has dispatched several delegations to Washington to explore potential deals with the new administration, arguing that tariffs would add to the inflationary pressure in the U.S. that Trump is trying to tame.

Simultaneously, Beijing has developed an arsenal of tools—such as export controls on critical minerals—to inflict economic pain on the U.S. and has been courting America’s traditional partners to prepare for a more intense face-off with Washington.

One lesson Xi has learned from the first trade war with Trump is that China has more to lose from hitting back at Trump’s tariff hikes with proportional levy increases, the people said, as the U.S. buys substantially more from China than the other way around.

Michael Pillsbury, a China expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation who consults with the administration, said he has met with members of Chinese delegations that have visited Washington since the election. The Chinese effort amounts to a campaign to ward off tariffs, he said.

“They are kind of desperate,” Pillsbury said. “Their economy is in trouble. Now that Trump put the tariffs on, they know this campaign has failed.”

Still, as Washington amps up pressure, Beijing is trying to project confidence. After Trump’s latest tariff actions this week, China swiftly retaliated. Meanwhile, Beijing set a growth target of about 5% for 2025, a signal that it expects the Chinese economy to resist the rising trade pressures. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman took a defiant stance, saying, “If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”

‘Let the Chinese stew’

Trump and Xi seemed to be off to a good start, similar to the beginning of Trump’s first term in 2017. The American leader invited Xi to his Jan. 20 inauguration, and while the Chinese leader sent his vice president instead, it was still a goodwill gesture from a leadership often wary of political risks. Both leaders have expressed an interest in having a summit.

Such diplomatic niceties, however, only mask the actions beneath—and what likely is in store for China.

Trump’s “America First” policy essentially calls for dismantling the norms set up by the World Trade Organization since 1995. Under those norms, China has been able to flood the world with cheap exports while limiting foreign access to its own market. China’s central control to manage the economy. China generally abhors what it sees as any outside attempt to challenge the Communist Party’s governance.

The people point to as a template a proposed deal Beijing rejected in May 2019, after rounds of intense negotiations during the height of the trade war with the first Trump administration. That deal proposed changes in Chinese laws to prohibit theft of American technology and to better protect American companies operating in China—changes Xi found unacceptable.

Trump isn’t in a rush to negotiate with Xi because of the U.S.’s economic strength, the people said. The administration is developing “a lot of sticks and leverage” that can be used in negotiations, said one of the people.

Trump also continues to believe that he can take actions like tariffs, while simultaneously expecting that his personal relationship with Xi can result in the two countries finding some common ground, the people said.

Rivals, partners

It was during Trump’s first four years in the White House, from 2017 to 2020, that the U.S. policy toward China underwent a major makeover. The longstanding strategy of deepening economic ties and cooperative engagement with Beijing was replaced by one characterized by estrangement, including increased tariffs and tech restrictions.

Even though President Joe Biden continued the assertive approach, his administration largely kept the relationship on an even keel. Scores of channels of communication with Beijing were revived under Biden.

Now, much to the chagrin of Beijing, Trump in his second term is both less restrained and more determined, paving the way for even more intense U.S.-China storms.

In meetings with American business and thought leaders in recent months, Xi and his aides have repeatedly conveyed Beijing’s desire to be a partner with the U.S., not an outright adversary, according to people who attended the gatherings.

“They’ve studied Trump carefully and have a pretty realistic view of the situation,” said Graham Allison, former dean of Harvard Kennedy School who has met with Xi and other senior Chinese officials in the past year. “Xi has been vocal about his effort to conceptualize the relationship as one where the U.S. and China are both rivals and partners simultaneously.”

Trump’s one-two tariff punch in the past weeks has exposed pitfalls in Beijing’s wait-and-see approach toward Washington.

Since Trump slapped the initial 10% tariffs on Chinese goods in early February, according to the people close to Beijing’s thinking, China’s leadership has been holding out for the Trump team to make specific demands, in hopes that those asks could lead to a broader discussion.

Xi isn’t interested in making an offer just on fentanyl, the people said. Rather, they said, Xi hopes to engage Trump in dialogue that can lead to a more comprehensive agreement and define the overall relationship.

Xi’s envoy to Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Vice President Han Zheng, told Trump officials about Beijing’s willingness to discuss a range of topics including fentanyl and trade, the people said.

The 10% additional tariff move by Trump this week, one of the people said, was “pretty unexpected,” while adding, “the Chinese side has been holding out for the U.S. side to come to the table with conditions.”

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com and Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com