President Donald Trump is preparing for a grand welcome in Beijing next month, previewing last week that he hoped it would be the “biggest display you’ve ever had in the history of China.” But after a Supreme Court ruling dealt a blow to his tariff regime — a prized cudgel in his strategic arsenal against Beijing — the negotiating table is once again being rearranged.
Trump has since moved swiftly to circumvent the ruling and preserve his aggressive trade regime, pledging over the weekend to levy a new 15 percent global tariff. That tariff went into effect Tuesday, though at 10 percent, a lower rate than Trump promised.
While he may ultimately be able to pull other levers to raise tariffs on Beijing and deploy additional pain points, the ruling undercut a central element of the president’s China strategy just weeks before he is expected to sit down with President Xi Jinping.
Chinese negotiators — who have not publicly confirmed the late-March meeting even as the White House released specific dates — are now scrambling to assess how Trump may seek to supplement his weakened tariff regime.
“It’s a signal, and this is going to be read by the Chinese as well, that the president can no longer use that power in a spontaneous way,” said Zongyuan Liu, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
It’s one of several developments that have muddied preparations for one of the most consequential leader-level encounters of Trump’s term. The White House is seeking a major trade victory ahead of the midterm elections while Beijing hopes to reverse nearly a decade of tightening U.S. policy toward China.
Beyond uncertainty surrounding Trump’s tariff regime, preparations for the meeting have been strained by other tensions, including unease over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and White House accusations that China is testing nuclear weapons.
While the Supreme Court’s ruling on Trump’s tariffs carries broad implications for trade negotiations, it is not expected to immediately give Beijing significant relief, experts say. The majority of China’s roughly 32 percent tariff rate rests on authorities other than the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which the Supreme Court struck down last week. Unaffected by the Supreme Court’s decision are the Section 301 tariffs, which form the core of U.S. levies against China and were a central tool of Trump’s trade policy during his first administration.
However, the decision still represents a political win for Beijing by stripping away one of the U.S. president’s most potent sources of leverage. Last year, Trump wielded tariffs under the IEEPA justification to temporarily drive China’s already elevated tariff rate to an unprecedented 145 percent — an attempt to pressure Beijing into trade concessions.
“Before the Trump administration gets into the real negotiation [with China] they usually dial up the pressure to create maximum pressure. So there’s pattern there, though the Chinese called his bluff last year. … The tariffs are here to stay, but this is certainly a political strike against the Trump administration’s tariff agenda,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank.
In China, where the country is emerging from its Lunar New Year holiday, authorities scrambled to digest the sudden whiplash in the U.S. tariff regime and its implications for negotiations, according to two Chinese officials familiar with discussions at the country’s commerce and foreign ministries.
On Monday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said that it was conducting a “comprehensive assessment” of the Supreme Court ruling and warned it was bracing for “alternative measures” from the White House, issuing a sharp warning that further sanctions would be “harmful” and that Beijing reserves the right to “firmly safeguard its interests.”
The White House confirmed the dates of Trump’s planned visit to China within hours of the Supreme Court decision last week, announcing that the president is expected to travel to Beijing for a three-day visit beginning March 31. Announcing such meetings between Chinese and U.S. leaders so far in advance is unusual, given the historic potential for hot-button issues to derail talks at the last minute.
“This is exactly why the specific details are not made public … the situation can change quickly,” said one Chinese official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the upcoming talks.
Taiwan issues continue to roil the relationship. In December, Trump approved an unprecedented $11 billion arms package for Taiwan, prompting Beijing to respond with a sweeping live-fire military exercise that encircled the self-governed island.
Throughout that period, Chinese negotiators struggled to initiate the necessary discussions among high-level defense and foreign ministry officials that would lay the groundwork for Trump’s visit. “It was an uncomfortable situation,” said one Chinese official familiar with internal planning.
Since preparatory dialogues began, the White House has been pulled in multiple directions by competing foreign policy crises, including the surprise raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, renewed ambitions to assert control over Greenland and the rising prospect of a sustained military campaign against Iran.
“For [the Chinese], a presidential visit needs to be negotiated several months in advance … but no one was really there to talk to them,” said the Stimson Center’s Sun.
Earlier this month, Trump and Xi held a call that the U.S. president described as “extremely good,” adding that he expects “many positive results.” The Chinese statement was more measured — warning the U.S. side to handle arms sales to Taiwan with “extreme caution.”
Recently, some members of Congress were informed of another potential arms deal for Taiwan, which, following so closely after the $11 billion deal in December, could threaten to upend negotiations. Two congressional aides and three people familiar with the deal said it appeared that the arms sale was being held up by the administration, though the details and the dollar amount weren’t immediately clear.
Last week, when asked about Xi’s opposition to a further arms deal, Trump said, “I’m talking to him about it. We had a good conversations, and we’ll make a determination soon.”
The remark stirred debate among experts and former diplomats who feared Trump may be violating the so-called Six Assurances, a nonbinding set of U.S. policy agreements made in 1982, including that the United States would not consult with Beijing on arms deals with Taipei.
Trump has in recent weeks indicated his excitement for the trip. He has lauded his relationship with Xi and said he is preparing for a grand visit, describing how ceremonial Chinese soldier units he had previously seen in Beijing were so uniformly tall that “you could have played pool on the top of their heads.”
Noah Robertson contributed to this report.
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