CNN
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Hours after President Donald Trump’s commercial negotiation team approached a flight for the world’s most important economic meetings, his boss resorted to social networks to publicize a surprise.
Trump’s decision to propose the possibility of reducing his 145% tariffs at 80% gave the impression that Trump was negotiating with himself before the conversations began. But the content of the message was not a surprise for its main negotiators, who have discussed the possibility of reducing the US tariff to China in internal discussions before the conversations between the United States and China in Geneva, Switzerland.
But it was certainly a surprise for Chinese officials.
Trump’s fake deference to the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besent, who said in the publication that he would make any final decision, he intended to raise “Scott B” in the eyes of his Chinese counterparts. Actually, US officials are clear that Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping who, ultimately, will need to cement any important agreement.
Besent and the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, landed in Geneva, Switzerland, for two days of meetings with senior Chinese officials looking for what can be considered as less ambitious results, but not less important.
White House officials have made it clear that they see conversations with China in a separate route of the frantic career to ensure commercial agreements with dozens of other nations. These negotiations are officially underway after Trump’s decision on April 2 of Pausar the “reciprocal” tariffs for 90 days.
Trump’s advisors have framed some of these bilateral negotiations such as another lever to exert pressure on China’s economy, with a specific approach to ensure early agreements with countries in the Indo-Pacific region, including South Korea and Japan.
The White House approach to China is defined in its initial stages as a completely different, separated and apart from the approximately 20 ongoing priority negotiations.
Administration officials have framed a process destined to start with mutual steps towards the de -escalated, followed by demand for specific movements by China to address Trump’s priorities, such as the facilitation of fentanyl production and the resuscitation of the commercial agreement “Phase one” between the US and China, of its first mandate.
These steps would lay the bases for broader discussions about the commercial and economic relationship in general between the two nations.
“This conversation is about: can we get to a stable place and maybe that is a basis for something else?” Greer said Thursday in an interview with CNBC.
The most immediate concerns of the US about export controls imposed by China to rare earths can also promote possible agreements in early stages, but any type of broad agreement is, in the best case, a long -term process.
Unless, of course, Trump decides otherwise.
Current and previous economic advisors of the Administration introduce most conversations about negotiations with some variation of the fact that Trump can decide to change course at any time.
But Trump’s advisors are using this weekend meeting to forge a path outside a persistent and dangerous state of paralysis. They have seen positive signals in the period prior to conversations that, after a confrontation of months, joined in a familiar and deeply choreographed way.
-Both parties announced the scheduled meetings almost coordinated. Both parties insisted that their main negotiators were simply passing through a city that has long served as a third neutral country for the most contentious diplomatic relations. Both parties have generally maintained their public red lines that would seem to ensure little progress, while also sending a new degree of flexibility through associated means.
The officials who will lead the conversations of both parties are the most tangible sign that the conversations are serious and designed to advance substantially towards the unwinding.
He Lifeng, the main economic official of XI and a member for a long time of the intimate circle of the Chinese leader, will lead the Chinese delegation. Wang Xiaohong, the main security advisor of XI is also expected, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Greer, who during Trump’s first and second mandate has interacted with most trade and economy officials who are expected to attend the meetings, said the manifesto represented “people who are serious.”
“They are sending real people to talk to us about real problems, so I’m sure we can have a direct and sincere discussion with these people,” Greer said in CNBC.
Besent has become the public face of Trump’s economic team. Greer, a senior trade official in Trump’s first mandate who has played an increasingly central role within Trump’s economic team since his confirmation in the Senate in February, provides a similar level of gravity for the US side.
The director of the national Economic Council, Kevin Hasett, who spoke with Besent and Greer shortly before they boarded his flight on Thursday night, told journalists at the White House that there have been “very promising signs” on the Chinese side before meetings. He called the period prior to the meeting as an environment that both parties have addressed with “respect, collegiality and sketches of positive developments.”
This basic level of professional diplomacy is a radical change since the first month of Trump’s second term, where Chinese officials tried in vain to contact their American counterparts and advisors to the intimate circle, according to several people familiar with the matter.
That left Chinese officials in a state of “frustration and confusion,” according to a European diplomat informed about the matter. What was soon clear, said the diplomat, was how serious Trump was on completely reorienting the bilateral relationship, and that his method would be the economic force.
The retaliation of China, against which Trump and his advisors warned, was not a surprise. But he did deepen a break in the relationship that threatens the global economy and has already created significant stress in the national economies of both nations.
American officials have made clear publicly, and maintain in private, that the Chinese economy simply cannot sustain a prolonged commercial war with the United States. They have been reinforced in that vision by recent economic data that, they say, underline a combination of fragility in the country’s economic system and the acute risk that represents a de facto commercial embargo with the world’s largest economy.
American officials pointed out a silent approach to Chinese officials that caused the planning of the meeting, with a high security advisor from XI communicating a desire to work to address Trump’s main problems on the issue of fentanyl.
Trump’s fixation with XI and a possible broad economic agreement has been a prominent public characteristic of its first and second mandate in the White House, often for disgust of its toughest advisors.
They see their general evaluation of China as clear and focused on mitigating economic and security vulnerabilities. But there is no lack of very specific examples of their willingness to deviate from any type of aggressive linear approach.
The search for a great economic agreement can tempt it once again.
“It’s her white whale,” a White House official of Trump’s first mandate told CNN. “Think about it as your desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize: a great agreement with China is the economic version of that,” he added.
