Is the U.S.-China Trade Truce Cause to Celebrate?

Investors worldwide sighed with relief after President Trump hammered out a compromise with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea yesterday over their escalating trade war. Trump called the meeting “amazing” and said, “On a scale of 1 to 10, [it] was 12.” Yet considering China’s many aggressive efforts to dethrone America, such an agreement poses long-term concerns.

According to President Trump, China will:

• Buy “tremendous” amounts of American soybeans
• Delay export restrictions on their crucial rare-earth metals for one year
• Crack down on chemicals that can be used to make fentanyl

In return, Trump agreed to cut the tariff on China due to its fentanyl shipments from 20 percent to 10 percent. This will reduce America’s overall tariff on China from 57 percent to 47 percent.

China, however, has not yet confirmed that it will postpone its rare-earth mineral restrictions. And Trump was evasive when asked about America’s restrictions on advanced semiconductor technology being sold to China.

We have been here before. On June 11, the White House announced a trade deal with China was “done.” At best, that deal postponed a trade conflict for one year.

• Trump often celebrates when the general outline of a trade deal is done. But often the details are the most important and time-consuming parts of such a deal. This is why we continually see headlines about completed deals, only for them to unravel later.

For now, it’s clear that President Trump cannot boss around China the way he could many other countries. China has built up a lot of power, and taking it on in a trade war is not easy.

However, China clearly wants to dominate the world. It is unapologetically killing Americans. It unleashed covid-19. It is threatening U.S. ally Taiwan. It is working with Russia against America. It is committing genocide at home. The list goes on. With high tariffs and several steps to block China’s access to advanced technology that remain in place even after the deal, Donald Trump is finally confronting China. But it is too little too late. Anything that forcefully deals with the problems risks inflicting massive economic pain on Americans—and that’s a step President Trump has shown he does not want to take.

Should the president celebrate a “great” talk with China’s leader? As we wrote in 2021, China’s rise, “viewed in the context of biblical prophecy, … is a potent symbol of nothing less than a historic global shift occurring before our eyes: the end of the Anglo-American era, and the beginning of a short, dark period that will mark the final years of the age of man.”