AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Joe Biden sat down with Chinese leader Xi Jinping yesterday at an economic summit in Peru. It was the first time the two had met in a year. In a way, the meeting was overshadowed by who wasn't there, President-elect Donald Trump. Trump has vowed to take a more aggressive approach to China. To talk through this consequential diplomatic relationship, let's bring in Ryan Hass, a China expert at the Brookings Institution. Welcome to the show.
RYAN HASS: Thank you, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So how would you characterize relations between China and the U.S. under the Biden administration?
HASS: Well, Ayesha, if you think of the relationship like a roller coaster, I think it's been traveling on a downward slope for the past six or seven years. That precedes the Biden administration, but over the past year, this trajectory has flattened somewhat. It hasn't improved, necessarily, but it's certainly plateaued. And I think a few factors explain it. So the first is that both sides have rebuilt channels of direct communication to talk to each other on a regular basis.
There have been some limited cooperation on specific issues, like reducing the flow of fentanyl precursors from China into the United States. To be clear, there are still plenty of problems and challenges in the relationship around Taiwan and cyberattacks and Russia. But even in spite of those challenges - and I think both leaders saw value in this past year of trying to stabilize the relationship, each for their own reasons.
So that's where the relationship is today, and that's the type of relationship, I think, that President Trump will be inheriting on January 20.
RASCOE: Well, Trump is talking tough when it comes to China. How do you think the relationship might change when he returns to the White House?
HASS: Well, it's interesting watching the nominees that President-elect Trump is identifying. There are certainly people who are very hawkish in their views towards China. There are others who are more economic nationalists, who we expect to have a role in the administration. And then there are business types, like Elon Musk, who is certainly in President Trump's orbit. And these are sort of competing tribes that are all fighting for influence over the direction of President Trump's policy towards China. So because of that, it's really hard to predict any day-to-day moves. It's nearly impossible.
But I think that it is fairly easy to predict the direction of travel that President Trump would like to go because he's pretty transparent about what some of his goals are. He wants to be respected as a strong leader, and he wants to be seen as a great dealmaker. And there are really no other relationship in the world that offers him as big of an opportunity to show strength and deliver deals than the relationship with China. It's the biggest stage in the world.
RASCOE: During the last Trump administration, there was a lot of negotiating. The deals kind of seemed to just end up being tariffs and countertariffs. Is there a concern that there will be more of a trade war and less of negotiations?
HASS: There were a lot of tit-for-tat tariffs in the first term, but they did culminate, though, in a Phase 1 trade deal that President Trump used a elaborate event at the White House to unveil. The deal ultimately underperformed expectations, I think. So going into President Trump's second term, I imagine that he and others will be a bit jaundiced by their experience. But nevertheless, there are both strategic and trade deals that I expect that he will pursue.
President Trump wants to be a peacemaker in Ukraine, in the Middle East. He has shown interest in the past in dealing with North Korea and its nuclear program. And China's influence in all of those spheres is considerable. And then on trade, President Trump has vowed to impose up to 60% tariffs on Chinese imports. I don't think he'll do it all at once, but he will move in that direction to try to ratchet up pressure and create leverage that I expect he will want to use to pursue a deal.
RASCOE: Are there specific policies that you'll be looking out for from China and the U.S., like, in the coming months?
HASS: My expectation is that the Chinese have been thinking about President Trump's return to power for some time. I think that they are better prepared today than they were in 2017. They sort of know better what to expect. And so what I've been watching is the Chinese increasing their focus and emphasis on building trade relationships outside of the United States, so with developing countries in the Global South and then trying to reinvigorate their trade relationship with Europe.
And over time, we've watched the share of Chinese exports to the United States decline as the share of its exports to the rest of the world have gone up. So that will be a trend worth following. At the same time, I think the Chinese will continue to invest heavily in their own defense, both domestic security but also national security and their military capabilities.
RASCOE: What might be the consequences of a more volatile relationship between China and the U.S.?
HASS: Well, if taken to an extreme, it could hasten the emergence of rival blocs, much as we saw during the Cold War, where there's a U.S.-led bloc that is advanced developed economies that are largely democratic, and then on the other side would be a Chinese-led bloc of emerging markets and developing countries, mostly from the Global South, but closening relations between countries such as Iran and North Korea and Russia and China, and just sort of a sharpening and intensification of rivalry that would, you know, make the world a less safe place for all of us.
RASCOE: That's Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution. Thank you so much for joining us.
HASS: Thank you, Ayesha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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