US-China tension escalates ahead of a possible call between Trump and Xi Jinping

U.S. President Donald Trump has met, spoken, and even played golf with numerous foreign leaders since returning to the White House. But there is one glaring exception on his list: he has yet to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as tensions between the two economic powers escalate in areas ranging from mutual tariffs to defense, and the two governments trade barbs and accusations that threaten the shaky trade truce they reached last month. Now the White House is saying the two will talk very soon, likely this week. But Beijing is much more skeptical. And even if the two leaders do talk, their conversation is unlikely to resolve the deep underlying differences between the two governments.

The phone call between the two leaders will take place “very soon,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt reiterated at her weekly news conference on Tuesday. Leavitt had announced Monday that the conversation could take place as early as this week. Trump has made it clear that he believes that only through a conversation between the two will it be possible to get a $600 billion bilateral relationship back on track, vital to both giants and to the world.

Since his return to power, the president and the White House have repeatedly announced an imminent conversation with the Chinese leader, but in none of these cases has that call materialized. And in Beijing, the position seems much less enthusiastic about a conversation between the two presidents, given, moreover, the outcome of Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders with whom he disagrees, such as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, both of whom have been the victims of public rebukes and spats in the Oval Office. “I have no information to offer” about a possible dialogue, Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing Lin Jian said Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi also received the new U.S. ambassador to China, David Perdue, on Tuesday and insisted that the United States must “create the necessary conditions to return relations to the right path,” according to a statement from his ministry in Beijing, which seems to suggest that the Chinese government is not very willing to go along with the White House resident. “It is regrettable that the United States has recently introduced a series of negative measures,” added the Chinese foreign minister.

For his part, according to Beijing, Washington’s envoy stated that “President Trump has great respect for President Xi Jinping, and it is very important that the two heads of state maintain positive and constructive exchanges.”

The United States has accused China of failing to honor its commitment, reached in Geneva on May 12, to ease controls on the export of rare earths, essential for the manufacture of everything from semiconductors to automobiles and airplanes. Beijing controls most of the global supply.

“The fact that they are withholding some of the products that they agreed to release during our agreement — maybe it’s a glitch in the Chinese system, maybe it’s intentional. We’ll see after the president speaks with the party chairman," said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday in an interview with CBS.

The Asian giant, for its part, blames Washington for imposing undue restrictions on aircraft engine parts and the sale of specialized software for semiconductor design, in an attempt to prevent China from obtaining the most advanced chips. It also accuses it of imposing limits on semiconductor production by the Chinese giant Huawei. Furthermore, last week the United States announced that it would “aggressively” implement visa restrictions for Chinese students on its soil. “If the United States insists on going its own way and continues to harm China’s interests, China will continue to take firm and resolute measures to protect its legitimate rights,” the Chinese Ministry of Commerce warned on Monday.

Adding to the already existing tension between the world’s two largest economic powers was the remarks of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this weekend at the Shangri-La International Defense Forum in Singapore, where he accused Beijing of planning an “imminent” attack on Taiwan.

The mutual recriminations threaten to shatter the fragile understanding reached between the two giants last month. Trade and economic representatives from both countries met in Geneva amid threats to raise their tariffs into the stratosphere, while warnings from business leaders and academics mounted that the trade war between the two countries was already beginning to affect supply chains and product availability. When that meeting began, U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods had reached 145%, and Beijing’s on its rival’s products stood at 125%.

Both delegations, led respectively by Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and by Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, agreed to suspend their punitive measures for 90 days. The tariffs were temporarily reduced to 30% for Chinese products and 10% for American products, to the relief of the markets, which reacted with one of the largest surges in decades. That is, until a message from Trump on his social media platform Truth last Friday accused China of non-compliance and threatened to undo what had been achieved at that meeting.

Trump and Xi last spoke on January 17, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, and have not had any personal contact since. The U.S. president claimed in April that he had spoken with his counterpart, but China immediately denied it. The Republican is convinced that only a personal, man-to-man conversation between the two leaders will permanently resolve the problems in the bilateral trade relationship.

But that won’t necessarily be the case. The mistrust between the two governments is deep, and their styles are vastly different. “There’s a fundamental disconnect here,” former acting White House chief of staff and budget director Mick Mulvaney told Bloomberg TV. “Trump wants to talk at the very highest levels. That’s not always how the Chinese want to do business.” In general, Beijing prefers for specialists to handle the details of a negotiation, and for the very top brass — and, above all, Xi Jinping — only to intervene when everything is firmly in place.

In this case, according to Mulvaney, “I do not see them being able to pull off a deal the old-fashioned way, which is going through the back channels.” But at the same time, “I think it’d be very difficult to do a deal going the Trump way, which is only Xi to Trump, man-to-man.”

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