WIREDGOV

Chafing at China’s assertiveness and US unpredictability, the UK and Europe would be wise to pursue their own truly independent China policies.

President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping’s meeting this week comes at a moment of renewed economic confrontation and enduring mistrust.

Reports of a ‘positive framework’ covering tariff reprieves, China’s purchase of American soybeans, fentanyl cooperation, and rare earth export controls may build a fragile floor under the fraught relationship. But even a successful deal offers little scaffolding on which to shore up the structural foundations of this rivalry. 

Beyond lofty stakes for the superpowers, the meeting holds significance for America’s partners, who are already recalibrating their strategies. For them the meeting reiterates the need to pursue independent strategies to manage long-term turbulence – whether the US and China ultimately reach an enduring bargain, muddle through, or heighten confrontation.

Since January, the US administration has pursued short-term measures towards Beijing, grabbing headlines but lacking a broader strategy. A February tariff blitz yielded a mutual climbdown and extended truce. Washington tightened semiconductor export controls, only to greenlight certain Nvidia sales. And Trump postponed a legally mandated ban of TikTok in favour of a commercial solution.

Senior US officials are also divided in their outlooks, with pro-tariff economic nationalists, market-oriented dealmakers and security hardliners vying for influence.

Vacillating between hawkish barbs and placatory rollbacks, the approach reveals a pattern of expediency that often catches foreign capitals by surprise, even as they struggle to manage their own relationships with the US. 

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