Trump softens stance on China amid trade talks and summit push

Washington Post

5 days ago

The Trump administration has softened its approach to Beijing amid high-stakes trade talks this week and in advance of a potential fall summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The moves include dissuading Taiwan's leader from making planned stopovers in the United States next month, postponing a meeting between Taipei's defense minister and top Pentagon leaders in June, and pausing new export controls on China, according to more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials and other people familiar with the actions.
Critics of the nascent détente — including both Republicans and Democrats — have warned that the recent moves could undermine U.S. national security and impact regional alliances. Their concern is that Trump's desire to strike a trade deal with China is sidelining administration efforts to more forcefully compete with Beijing economically, technologically and militarily.
China is aggressively seeking to displace the U.S. and its western allies in emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing, which it sees as the key to accelerating its military modernization and global economic dominance.
'The president cares more about American businesses getting access to China's market than he seems to about national security concerns with Beijing,' said Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
The trip by Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, which was tentatively slated for early August to include stops in Dallas and New York City on a visit to diplomatic allies in Latin America, was pulled down after the Trump administration tried to change the itinerary, according to three people familiar with the matter, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.
One person said the administration sought to have Lai avoid major cities and limit public engagement.
'They didn't say absolutely no, but they put so many restrictions on [the stopovers] that it was clear they didn't want it,' a second person said.
Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its own and views any U.S. engagement with Taiwanese officials as a provocation, had intensely lobbied the administration and China experts in Washington to discourage the visit.
Asked for comment, Taiwan's unofficial embassy in Washington pointed to an earlier statement from Lai's office that 'the president currently has no plans for overseas visits in the near future.' The cancellation of Lai's trip after pressure from the Trump administration was first reported by the Financial Times.
'These concessions send a dangerous signal that America's approach to Taiwan is negotiable,' said Ely Ratner, a former senior defense official in the Biden administration. 'That will only lead to more Chinese pressure and coercion. For Beijing, the hunger will grow with the eating.'
The latest round of trade talks in Stockholm concluded Tuesday with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying the president would have to decide whether to extend a trade truce between the two countries.
'President Trump has publicly discussed his desire for a constructive relationship with China, who is sending rare earth magnets to the United States,' White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. 'He is focused on advancing American interests, such as leveling the playing field for American industries and getting China to stop the flow of fentanyl into our country.'
Lai isn't the first senior Taiwanese official to see his U.S. trip canceled this year. Taiwanese Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo was scheduled to visit Washington in June for high-level meetings with Pentagon officials, including policy chief Elbridge Colby, according to two other people familiar with the situation.
Those meetings were abruptly canceled by the U.S. after Xi urged Trump to limit U.S. engagement with Taiwan during a phone call earlier in June, the two people said.
Washington has yet to reschedule the meetings.
Meanwhile, the administration is weighing whether to directly ship more military equipment to Taiwan. The Defense Department submitted a tranche of aid to the White House for the president's consideration earlier this summer, but it has not yet been approved, according to a U.S. official. Instead, it sent the package to the State Department, which also plays a role in the security assistance process, according to another person familiar with the matter.
The Pentagon and State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Critics have also voiced concern about the Trump administration's moves to lift restrictions on the sale of AI semiconductors to China.
In July, the administration reversed an April decision to ban the sale of the H20, an AI chip made by the American semiconductor leviathan Nvidia, after CEO Jensen Huang's intensive efforts to persuade Trump.
Nvidia has claimed that the H20 chips would not be used to aid China's military and that America benefits when other countries depend on its technology.
National security experts and lawmakers from both parties have blasted the H20 decision, saying the technology will help advance China's military-industrial complex, with applications from simulating nuclear weapons to developing unmanned aircraft.
'We believe this move represents a strategic misstep that endangers the United States' economic and military edge in artificial intelligence — an area increasingly seen as decisive in 21st-century global leadership,' said 20 national security experts in a letter Monday urging Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to reverse course.
The signatories include former members of both Trump administrations such as David Feith, who spearheaded technology competition policy at the National Security Council until April; and Matthew Pottinger, who served as deputy national security adviser in Trump's first term.
The administration has made other moves to mollify China.
On May 13, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued guidance on certain chips made by Chinese tech giant Huawei. A press release warned companies that using specific versions of Huawei's Ascend semiconductor chips 'anywhere in the world violates'' U.S. export control laws.
Beijing was angered by the move, coming just as it had agreed to resume rare-earth exports, according to Christopher Padilla, a former top export control official in the George W. Bush administration, now a senior adviser with the Brunswick Group consulting firm.
Senior Trump administration officials became concerned the Commerce move would undermine ongoing trade negotiations. Shortly afterward, BIS removed the word 'violates' and replaced it with language stating that the agency was 'alerting industry to the risks of using' those chips, said three people familiar with the matter. The linguistic tweak did not affect the application of the rule, but it was a softer, more oblique warning.
The Commerce Department did not reply to requests for comment.
Shortly after the Huawei announcement, China froze approvals for rare-earth exports to the United States. In late May, BIS imposed export controls on chip design software, certain aircraft parts and ethane to China.
In June, both sides met in London and said they had agreed to lift their mutual restrictions. Since then, there has been a de facto pause on new trade controls involving China, several people said.
That pause comes in the wake of what some analysts say is the administration's undertaking of an ill-thought out trade war. They point to the president's April tariffs escalation of 145 percent, against which China retaliated with export controls on rare earth minerals.
'China found pain points in the United States that we could not withstand,' Sobolik said.
The apparent willingness of the Trump administration to put technology export controls on the trade bargaining table is a troubling development, said Padilla, who also served as undersecretary of commerce for international trade in the George W. Bush administration.
'Since the Carter administration and normalization with China,' the policy has been to deny Beijing's request to lift export controls in return for, say, closing the trade deficit, Padilla said.
Using them as leverage in trade talks sets 'a dangerous precedent,' he said, 'and it raises the real possibility that now China will demand relaxation of export controls in exchange for future trade concessions — or for an agreement if the president visits China later this year.'
In July, Trump told reporters at the White House: 'President Xi has invited me to China, and we'll probably be doing that in the not-too-distant future.'
On Tuesday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was 'not SEEKING' a summit with Xi. 'I may go to China, but it would only be at the invitation of President Xi, which has been extended,' he wrote. 'Otherwise, no interest!'
Eva Dou contributed to this report.