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U.S. officials are considering whether they can strike a deal with China that would ramp up its purchases of American goods and investments in the United States.
By Ana Swanson
Ana Swanson writes about international trade and covered President Trump’s negotiations with China in his first term. She reported from Washington.
- Feb. 19, 2025, 10:24 a.m. ET
During the Biden administration, Donald J. Trump would sit in his mirrored and gold-trimmed salon at Mar-a-Lago where he had once hosted China’s leader, Xi Jinping, brooding to visitors about the outcome of the trade agreement he signed with China in 2020.
Mr. Trump would castigate “stupid people” in the White House for failing to honor “my trade agreement,” and muse about how, if he won a second term, he could strike the deal of a century with Mr. Xi.
Now back in the Oval Office, President Trump is eyeing the possibility of a new trade deal with China.
More than half a dozen current and former advisers and others familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking say that, although there would be significant hurdles to reaching any agreement, the president would like to strike a wide-ranging deal with Mr. Xi, one that goes beyond just reworking the trading relationship.
Mr. Trump has expressed interest in a deal that would include substantial investments and commitments from the Chinese to buy more American products (despite China’s failure to buy an additional $200 billion of goods and services under the 2020 agreement). He would like an agreement to also include issues like nuclear weapons security, which he envisions ironing out man to man with Mr. Xi, his advisers say.
Mr. Trump is already following a familiar playbook of tariffs and other threats as he looks to negotiate a deal. On Feb. 1, he hit Beijing with 10 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports — what the president called an “opening salvo” — quickly resulting in retaliation from the Chinese. He has also floated the idea of revoking the permanent normal trading relations the United States extended to China more than 20 years ago.
