In classic form, Trump concluded his hollow trade deal with Xi Jinping Thursday, and then changed the subject and the headlines. With no clear plan or rationale, he announced that the U.S. could resume nuclear testing. And, of course, the Asia trip itself was planned as a diversion from the government shutdown. Trump’s method is to drive us to distraction.
A close examination of the agreement with Xi suggests that Trump got rolled; or more precisely, he rolled himself. Coherence and preparation matters. Xi and his advisers had plenty of it. Trump had mainly his own impulsivity.
The latest sequence began when China denied the U.S. access to rare earth minerals whose production China dominates, as a response to earlier U.S. tariff increases. Then in early October, Trump raised tariffs on China’s exports to 100 percent. Both of these were rolled back in the deal.
Next, Trump tossed soybeans into the mix. U.S. soybean farmers are outraged because of loss of export markets to Argentina and Brazil, as a by-product of Trump’s other policies. China as part of this week’s deal offered to buy more U.S. soybeans. But China made a similar pledge as part of a 2020 “Phase One” trade deal and its actual purchases fell short.
In that deal, China committed to buy 142 million tons over two years. In the current deal, China agreed to far less, only 25 million tons a year over the next three years. A similar on-again, off-again pattern has affected China’s commitments to work to halt fentanyl production. But Trump made specific cuts to Chinese tariffs in exchange for pledges on these matters.
To the extent that the deal provides “relief,” it’s relief from the pain Trump imposed on the economy himself. But to anyone serious about the China challenge, these issues are a sideshow. The larger issues of China’s growing dominance of a whole range of advanced technologies via predatory mercantilist industrial policies were untouched in these negotiations.
More alarmingly, despite protestations that national-security issues would never be sacrificed in trade negotiations, Trump did exactly that. As part of the deal, Trump agreed to a one-year pause on export controls that increased the number of Chinese companies barred from access to advanced technology. The rule, issued just four weeks ago, expanded the so-called “entity list” of blacklisted foreign companies that pose a national-security threat.
The even bigger concern was that Trump would allow the sale of Nvidia’s most advanced semiconductors, its Blackwell chips, to China. As Trump flew to South Korea on Wednesday to meet Xi, he told reporters, “We’ll be speaking about Blackwell.” Mr. Trump called the technology a “super-duper chip” and complimented Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
After extensive pushback from leaders of both parties and blindsided national-security advisers, Trump took Blackwell chips off the negotiating table—for now. There were also no concessions, at least in public, on Chinese aggression toward Taiwan. But the one-year pause on other export controls is damaging enough.
As for Trump’s announcement on Truth Social that the U.S. could be resuming nuclear testing, this move makes no strategic or military sense, though it could increase tensions. Since testing by all the great nuclear powers was suspended in the early 1990s, the U.S., Russia, and China have continued to refine and advance their nuclear arsenals, but with computer simulations rather than tests.
“We’ve halted it years—many years—ago,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One, returning from South Korea. “But with others doing testing, I think it is appropriate that we do also.” In fact, the only nation to test since the 1990s was North Korea, and that was in 2017.
So why now? As in the case of his bulldozing the East Wing to build a palatial ballroom, Trump is toying with the idea of resuming nuclear testing because he can, and as a way of thumbing his nose at a long-standing bipartisan consensus on good policy.
Trade wars are minor compared with the risks of nuclear ones. It’s a hell of a way of changing the subject.