In U.S. trade factions, nations look for friendly face
SHANGHAI — Wilbur Ross, the U.S. commerce secretary, arrived in Beijing on Saturday for a weekend visit aimed at averting a potentially punishing trade war. The big question for China: If the Chinese reach an agreement with him, will President Donald Trump stick to it?
As the U.S. challenges Europe, China, Canada, Mexico and much of the rest of the world over trade, deep factionalism within the Trump administration has flummoxed U.S. allies and rivals alike. The White House strikes a conciliatory tone one day and a militant one the next, often depending on which Trump advisers are in favor.
Increasingly, leaders in other countries are asking who is calling the shots: the globalists, the nationalists, the trade hawks or someone else?
To a degree, the mixed messages reflect the negotiating tactics of a president who likes to keep the other side off balance. But the inconsistency has spurred international leaders to court Trump officials who they think will offer a sympathetic ear, rather than the White House as a whole — a divide-and-conquer approach that could make trade deals harder to strike. It has also eroded the belief among many leaders that the Trump administration will keep its word.
“We have to believe that at some point their common sense will prevail,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said in a tweet, referring to the American public, after the Trump administration’s latest move on tariffs. “But we see no sign of that in this action today by the U.S. administration.”
Even the Chinese government, which typically couches even its most aggressive statements in oblique diplomatic terms, is increasingly talking about the administration with the rhetorical equivalent of an eye roll.
“In international relations, every time you change your face and turn your back is another loss and squandering of your country’s credibility,” Hua Chunying, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a briefing in Beijing on Wednesday.
Just in the past week, U.S. trading partners have grappled with a new wave of aggressive moves. On Thursday, in the decision that prompted Trudeau’s tweet, the Trump administration said it wouldn’t exempt Canada, Mexico or the European Union from its new steel and aluminum tariffs, after postponing the move twice.
On China, the Trump administration said it would move ahead with tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese-made goods. Just a week before, a senior official had suggested they would be suspended. U.S. officials also walked back the possibility that Trump would lift crippling trade limits placed on ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications company, for violating U.S. trade restrictions on North Korea and Iran.
Foreign negotiators are seeking friendly faces within the White House in hopes that those people’s arguments will carry the day.
Chinese officials have aggressively tried to woo Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and Ross, say people familiar with the Chinese negotiating position, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were sensitive. Both men have extensive business and Wall Street backgrounds, and Chinese officials believe they would be receptive to arguments that China’s big trade surplus with the United States stems largely from economic factors rather than unfair trade practices.