Chummy in China
The president’s Asia tour appears to be calming
President Donald Trump’s visit to China focused on two big questions, trade and what to do about North Korea. Although the American public may have a hard time finding out what was actually said in private between Mr. Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, it is also clear that Mr. Trump decided to lay off his sometimes harsh rhetoric toward China and concentrate instead on playing the good guest. He was generous both about China’s rising aspirations in the world and Mr. Xi’s own leadership qualities, recently affirmed by measures in the Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
This public change of course on China may simply affirm his acceptance of a good guest posture. Or he may have seen things on the trip, including visits to Japan and South Korea, that served to modify his approach to China and Mr. Xi. This may not become clear unless it turns up as policy down the line. Americans would like to think that presidents learn from overseas travel and contact with world leaders.
On the principal two substantive issues with China, trade and North Korea, there was some cognitive distance to be gained between Mr. Trump’s previous positions and reality. Visits to Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing had to have made clear to him that war, particularly nuclear war, in the region, even given the level of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s aspirations in the weapons field, is out of the question. The unavoidable casualties to longtime U.S. ally South Korea in such a war are unthinkable.
Japan, given its proximity to the Korean Peninsula and its own vulnerability, risking all that it has achieved since 1945, has to also be adamantly opposed to war against North Korea. China has not only reasons but also the means to see that North Korea doesn’t do something crazy. Mr. Trump has to have taken one of his quiet moments with Mr. Xi to have made clear to the Chinese leader that not only peace, but also China’s rising global reputation, stands in the balance in his keeping the North Koreans under constraints.
One could look for something dramatic, such as an “invitation” to Mr. Kim to Beijing as a next step in the lethal dance among China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The U.S.-China trade issue is hard to sort out. Mr. Trump is historically correct in saying that the longtime trade deficit between the two countries occurred on his predecessors’ watches. On the other hand, it is true that it is a result of factors that were hard for any American leader to deal with. Primary among these was the American consumer’s love affair with cheap, ubiquitous Chinesemade goods. Trying to stifle U.S. imports from China through tariffs was going to raise the price of these goods for American consumers.
It is also the case that American producers’ unwillingness or inability to compete effectively with Chinese imports in many fields contributed mightily to the problem. It would be nice to think that tax reform now, increasing American companies’ competitiveness through cutting their tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, could help. It is also clearly the case that America needs to do much more in its diplomacy with China, including at the TrumpXi level, to open up the increasingly rich Chinese market to American goods and services. That’s how a trade imbalance is evened out, through an increase in American exports, not just a decrease in Chinese imports, although both would help.
The trip so far has likely been worth taking. Mr. Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin remains ahead. The proof of the pudding will lie, however, in policies on Mr. Trump’s part that come after the Asian odyssey. Did he learn? What did he learn?