Why China Won’t Give In to Trump

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump bragged that many foreign leaders were “kissing his ass” to avoid the steep tariffs he’d imposed on their countries. But China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was not one of them. “We are waiting for their call,” Trump said of China’s leadership in a social-media post.

He might be waiting for a while. Xi became China’s most powerful political figure in half a century by promoting a new Chinese nationalism—not by kowtowing to anyone, least of all the president of the United States.

“Seeking to negotiate on U.S. terms would be deeply embarrassing for Xi and could potentially weaken his standing and even control over the Communist Party and the country,” Steve Tsang, the director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, told me. That’s because the party justifies Xi’s dictatorship by portraying him as the ultimate defender of the Chinese people—the man who will restore China’s past glory and attain the “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation. He must be seen standing up to foreign oppressors who seek to humiliate China and thwart its rightful rise.

“The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress, or enslave us,” Xi said in a speech commemorating the centennial of the Communist Party in 2021. “Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel.”

[Read: Trade will move on without the United States]

Little wonder, then, that Xi has been quick to retaliate against Trump while other leaders have held back. Trump slapped an additional 34 percent duty on Chinese imports on April 2, and Xi responded two days later with a 34 percent tariff on U.S. imports. Trump then retaliated by imposing another 50 percent duty, which Xi matched the next day. On Wednesday, Trump tried isolating Xi by pausing most tariffs on all countries for 90 days—except for China, on which he increased his duties yet again. On Friday, Beijing raised its duties on American imports once more.

As the two countries exchanged punch for punch, Xi’s government signaled a calm resolve. An op-ed in the People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, quoted Xi saying that “maintaining composure, strengthening confidence, and focusing on doing our own work well are the keys to overcoming various risks and challenges.”

The Chinese Communist Party is characterizing Trump’s trade war as an American effort to contain and suppress China’s economic success—one the government is fully prepared to thwart, according to one commentary in the People’s Daily. This framing commits Beijing to holding out, because the alternative is for a party that predicates its power on the projection of strength to appear to be capitulating to a hostile onslaught.

Trump and his team do not seem to understand Xi’s political realities. They seem to believe that if they keep turning up the pressure, Xi will eventually come to heel. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted that Xi’s retaliation was “a big mistake.” Because China exports so much more to the U.S. than it imports, “they’re playing with a pair of twos,” he said.

He’s not wrong about the risks. Chinese exports to the U.S. totaled almost $440 billion last year and are a major source of jobs. The London-based research firm Capital Economics projected in a recent report that those exports could fall by more than half if Trump’s tariffs stay in place—a blow China’s struggling economy can ill afford.

[Rogé Karma: The tariff damage that can’t be undone]

But China has leverage in this relationship, too. American companies and consumers rely on Chinese imports. Xi has already restricted exports of some rare-earth metals, for instance—an industry China dominates. Yesterday, China’s regulators took aim at Hollywood, announcing that they would reduce the number of American films approved for screening in Chinese theaters. Moreover, Trump is under pressure, both from the markets (likely occasioning the 90-day pause) and within his inner circle, with tensions over tariffs breaking into the open between Elon Musk and the White House adviser Peter Navarro.

Trump’s comments suggest he’d prefer to parlay. “I think he’s going to want to get to a deal,” Trump said of Xi on Wednesday. “I think that’s going to happen. We’ll get a phone call at some point, and it’ll be off to the races.”

Eventually, Trump and Xi may find their way to the negotiating table. But that will happen only if Xi can appear at least the equal of Trump, if not the man in control. Trump’s approach so far doesn’t invite this outcome. His tariff scheme seems to have degenerated from a program to restore American manufacturing to little more than a form of blackmail to extort concessions from U.S. trading partners—in the process allowing Trump to present himself as a powerful leader whose ass is getting kissed.

The leaders of both the United States and China need, for domestic political reasons, to appear to be the top dog. The problem is that only one of them can be.