Simone McCarthy,
US President Donald Trump may have touted the latest trade deal between the US and China as a win for America. But it’s Chinese leaders who have walked away with an extra spring in their step.
While full details of the agreement, reached by negotiators in London last week, remain under wraps, it appears largely to restore an earlier arrangement sealed in May, which had rapidly deteriorated as mistrust and tension between the two sides spiraled.
This time around, China has learned a key lesson: the power of its leverage over the US — and how it can use that to its advantage in the months ahead.
“China feels it has more bargaining power than it originally expected,” said Liu Dongshu, an assistant professor focusing on Chinese politics at the City University of Hong Kong. And over recent months of trade tussles, Beijing has realized: “Trump is not as tough as he appeared to be.”
China’s official statements on the latest agreement have been much more muted than Trump’s, who wrote on social media in all caps that the “deal with China is done” and described how the US would get access to China’ rare earth minerals, while maintaining elevated tariffs.
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