There were a lot of sounds and fury, and a surprising policy towards President Donald Trump’s trip to New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly.
But the most important index of his long -term foreign policy intentions could prove to be what Sherlock Holmes called the “dog who did not barked”.
The People’s Republic of China.
Why we wrote this
President Donald Trump was rude with almost all countries attended the United Nations General Assembly this week. Except one. Could his diplomatic silence on China suggest his next diplomatic initiative?
The United States President’s campaign style performance at the United Nations has expressed its standard approach to other countries – avoiding the strategies and commitment of past American administrations and changing “politics” with each discourse, publication on social networks or notes to the media. But there are signs that it comes back to more traditional diplomacy towards Beijing.
Despite his longtime chorus on how he gets along with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, this does not mean that the two men are likely to become the best friends.
The mode of American-Chinese relations remains competitive. A difficult line towards Beijing is one of the few politicians for which there is still bipartite support in Capitol Hill.
However, since earlier this year, when he has considerably increased his prices as a first mandate on Beijing, Trump sought means to build a more stable, sustainable and respectful relationship.
Friday, the last panel was submitted to the general meeting, when the two leaders spoke by phone for the first time since June.
They agreed to meet in person at the Summit of Economic Cooperation in Asia-Pacific in South Korea at the end of October. Trump said he agreed to visit Beijing early next year and that Mr. Xi “came to the United States at a appropriate time.”
Substance problems continue to block the path to everything that looks like a real rapprochement, despite what China has called the “pragmatic, positive and constructive” call.
The most immediately on the agenda is the future of the social media platform belonging to Chinese Tiktok. The Congress demanded that its American operation should be placed under the majority of the American property or the closure.
American prices on Chinese exports are also a problem – against their maximum of 145% in April, but still at around 30%.
China wants the White House facilitating export restrictions on high -tech objects, and Beijing does not want Mr. Trump to listen to the advisers who were rushing to take a hard line in Taiwan, the island democracy Mr. Xi swore to “come together” with the continent.
For Washington, exceptional grievances include Chinese production of precursor chemicals for fentanyl. US officials are also dissatisfied with the way Beijing helps to cushion the impact of Western sanctions against Moscow, buying its crude oil and selling goods and materials.
However, Mr. Trump’s patience in talks with China, and his restraint from social media, because his negotiators asked for common ground, contrast with his approach to the rest of the world.
That President Trump told the allies of Western Europe of the United Nations podium that their countries “went to hell”.
And he used his social media platform to turn around on Ukraine. After having repeatedly disparaged kyiv’s prospects in the war, he declared unexpectedly – that Ukraine could, with NATO’s support, defeat Russia. He added the insult to the injury, making fun of the Russian leader Vladimir Putin for his inability to win the war after three years.
The American president avoided targeting these beards to Mr. XI.
In recent months, he has replaced the Congress by unilaterally delaying the order of stopping Tiktok, more recently last week with a moratorium until mid-December.
He slightly attenuated export restrictions on micropile sales in China.
When he used prices to suppress countries buying Russian oil, he targeted India with an additional 25%levy. He left the largest single oil client of Mr. Putin: China.
And, in June, the White House told the president of Taiwan that he should not make a planned stopover in New York.
Mr. Trump’s transactional point of view of global policy means that a change of orientation in the coming weeks cannot be excluded.
But it seems unlikely to impose on China the type of policy solution that he applied to Russia and Ukraine this week.
Part of the reason why Mr. Trump initially courted Mr. Putin with a plan adapted to Russia to end the war in Ukraine was to open the way at the end of American sanctions, for a new economic and investment partnership, and for an attempt to divert Russia from his alliance with Beijing.
The diplomats called him an “reverse Nixon”, an allusion to the opening of the 1970s of Washington in China, weakening the hand of Moscow during the Cold War.
However, even if Mr. Trump again changes adequacy on Ukraine in the coming weeks, he seems to have recognized that Russia, despite its size and reserves of fossil fuels, is a minor actor on the world economic scene.
China, on the other hand, is undoubtedly a major economic power. And it is not without leverage.
When Mr. Trump accepted a provisional agreement reducing the prices in April from the sky, he was not only trying to make beautiful.
This decision occurred in the heels of a Chinese announcement that she interrupted the exports of rare earth products and high -end magnets, on which the advanced American civil and military industries are based.
In other words, Mr. Trump’s more malleable approach in China could endure a basic principle of traditional diplomacy: that even countries that may not not make friends with each other, sometimes need each other.
