https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/01/trump-xi-china-coronavirus-trade-deal/
However erratic Trump’s positions on China appear at the surface, an
honest examination of his engagement with Beijing reveals not
unpredictability but a dangerous steadfastness. Trump has consistently
placed his personal political interests over the national interest of
the United States—even when the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Nor has Trump been shy about brandishing the trade deal as a pillar
of his reelection campaign. Just before its signing, Trump crowed about
the deal—describing it as a “big, beautiful monster”—at a campaign rally in the swing state of Ohio. During the signing ceremony itself, he declared: “It just doesn’t get any bigger than this.” Trump’s campaign, moreover, was planning
a series of television ads touting the deal, whose signing and
implementation spanned the exact period when America’s coronavirus
trajectory was taking shape. It was precisely during this period when
the dialogue between Washington and Beijing could have benefited from
less fawning and more calls for transparency and international
cooperation. But for Trump himself, the trade deal and its political
implications didn’t “get any bigger,” and not even public health
concerns could push him to jeopardize his rapport with Xi to secure it.
Other developments in Trump’s relations with Beijing that seem
erratic on the surface display the same predictable, one-track mindset.
This includes Trump’s protection of the Chinese telecommunications firm
ZTE against his own officials in the Department of Commerce. In March
2017, ZTE pleaded guilty in the United States to illegally exporting
American technology to Iran and North Korea. A year later, when the firm
violated the settlement agreement with the U.S. court, the Department
of Commerce banned
American companies from providing ZTE with technology for seven years.
The ruling underscored the national security implications of ZTE’s
original offenses, its disregard for the settlement agreement, and the
company’s efforts to cover up that disregard.
Trump upended this course of action in May 2018, when he abruptly tweeted
about how he was working with Xi to get ZTE “back into business,”
citing “[t]oo many jobs in China lost” and directing the Commerce
Department to “get it done.” The U.S. president’s focus on unemployed
Chinese—after railing against Beijing’s unfair economic practices for
years—raised eyebrows and sowed confusion even within his own administration.
