Xi’s ‘Art of the Spiel’ trumps the ‘Art of the Deal’
Has President Trump blinked first in his rush to get a TikTok deal and opened the door to China?
What happens when Trump’s Art of the Deal collides with Xi’s Art of the Spiel? Washington folds. Bravado and ego make up a lousy hand in the high-stakes, diplomatic poker game between the United States and China. Blink and you lose the trade war.
So, has President Donald Trump just blinked? Fears are growing that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is on the verge of pulling off the deal of the decade.
Last week, reports emerged that China was “dangling the prospect” of a massive US$1 trillion investment package to the US. It was believed to be part of the agreement to transfer the short video app TikTok to an American consortium.
The plan was understood to have been thrashed out during the Madrid trade talks in September. “TikTok as bait, America as prey,” China Business Spotlight surmised earlier this week in a newsletter.
“According to China’s interpretation, a framework was agreed upon. TikTok [would] be transferred to a US [group] but without access to the algorithm. Investment barriers [would] be removed and economic cooperation [would] grow,” it said.
TikTok trade clock:
- In a Fox Business interview, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said talks in Madrid involved “the investment climate in the United States for Chinese companies.”
- Chinese trade negotiator Li Chenggang parroted a similar line when he told the media that the US had “expressed its willingness to reduce barriers to investment.”
Beijing is trading TikTok for the removal of investment barriers.
Zichen Wang of the Center for China and Globalization
Delve deeper: Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first administration, warned a surge of Chinese investment into the American economy would be a major concession to Beijing, Bloomberg News reported.
Between the lines: “That would be tantamount to the US becoming part of the Belt and Road – indeed, its final destination,” he told Bloomberg, referring to the $1 trillion-plus global infrastructure funding project rolled out by Xi more than a decade ago.
Big picture: What happens next will depend on the planned outcome of Trump’s face-to-face talks with Xi at the Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in South Korea later this month.
Bottom line: Yet for China, this seems a big win. “Beijing is trading TikTok for the removal of investment barriers from Washington,” Zichen Wang, of the Center for China and Globalization, wrote in Pekingnology last month.
China Factor comment: Chaos seems to stalk the White House corridors of power during Trump’s second term. Allies have become enemies under little more than a whim. Autocrats appear to be embraced, while bad deals are swept under the plush carpets.