Trump, who is fully facing the 2024 U.S. presidential election, recently threatened to impose at least 60% tariffs on all Chinese goods as long as he can become president again, in an interview with pro-conservative media Fox News. Trump also argued that "he has no intention of starting a trade war again," but that he must act for the sake of America's "national security." After Trump said this, the American business community suddenly fell into a state of unease, and there was speculation that after the strongman leader took office, Sino-US economic and trade relations may suffer a greater impact. At a time when the outside world is generally worried about the future of China and the United States, there is news that the US Treasury Department will soon organize a delegation to visit China.
According to the news released by a number of US media on the 5th of this month, a source familiar with the Ministry of Finance revealed to the media that Jay Chambeaugh, the US deputy Treasury secretary in charge of international affairs, will lead a delegation to Beijing for a visit later this week. It is reported that the visit is part of the work of the China-US Economic Working Group, and representatives of the two sides will discuss cooperation in the fields of global economic risks, China-US economic prospects, investment review systems in the field of national security, climate change response, and debt relief for poor countries.
According to people familiar with the matter, if the consultations are successful, this will be the third meeting of the Sino-US Economic Working Group since its establishment, and it will also be the first meeting to be held in Beijing. Trump has publicly vowed to impose higher tariffs on all Chinese exports to the United States after taking office. Yellen sent people to China for a mechanism meeting, and this operation is inevitably suspected of "borrowing strength". In fact, judging from the content disclosed by the US media, several main topics of the US delegation's visit to China do include tax issues, which means that the Biden administration has also begun to realize that if it wants to achieve phased substantive results in strategic communication with China, it has to face the tariff issue.
However, the essence of the tariff dispute between China and the United States is that the United States intends to use trade protection tools to curb China's exports to the United States, which is called to "narrow the trade deficit", but since the Trump administration sacrificed tariff tools, most of the tariffs have been borne by the American people. From the perspective of the trade volume between China and the United States in 2023, the two sides will be 664.451 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 11.6%, of which China's exports to the United States will drop by 13.1%. Therefore, the Biden administration's real idea is likely to be to negotiate with our side to get the two countries to take a step back in the "tariff war".
Biden hopes to ensure that he can get more bargaining chips in the upcoming election campaign and suppress Trump's upward momentum at the public opinion level. Trump's thinking is just the opposite, he is well versed in the psychology of the middle and lower classes in the United States, and knows what the other side is willing to listen to, so he will frequently release tough messages about China in front of the media. To a certain extent, Biden and Trump are both acting in order to win the election, which is also an underlying logic of the "domestic politics" of US diplomacy in recent years.
But the problem is that many of the problems facing American society today are the inevitable result of its own long-term misgovernance, and pinning its hopes on China's concessions to save itself is completely an act of seeking fish. It is foreseeable that when the U.S. election campaign officially enters the white-hot stage, the impact on Sino-US relations will rise exponentially. Even if China and the Biden administration reach a consensus on certain issues, it is likely to be nullified.
Even if the U.S. Treasury Department led by Yellen wants to get more "certainty" from the mainland, in the final analysis, it still depends on whether the Biden administration can maintain policy continuity and predictability.