Trump’s trade war with China threatens to derail broader US strategic goals

President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China is casting a shadow over broader US strategic efforts, threatening to undermine progress on issues ranging from Taiwan and fentanyl to TikTok and artificial intelligence.

While Trump and his aides have signaled intentions to de-escalate tensions and advance negotiations on multiple fronts, his all-in approach to tariffs risks shutting down diplomacy before it can begin, Caliber.Az reports via foreign media.

According to administration insiders, the White House remains divided on its China strategy, with conflicting views creating what experts are calling “strategic incoherence.”

Rush Doshi, a leading China strategist, remarked, “They don’t have a grand strategy yet. They have a range of disconnected tactics.” Doshi, alongside Kurt M. Campbell in Foreign Affairs, urged the US to rally allies like Japan, South Korea, and the EU to collectively counterbalance China’s scale: “China possesses scale, and the United States does not — at least not by itself.”

Despite Trump’s claims that tariffs are working—“The higher the tariff, the faster they come in”—China has responded with measured retaliation. It matched tariff hikes and suspended exports of critical minerals essential for US defence and tech industries. Former US Ambassador to China, R. Nicholas Burns, described the standoff as “one of the most serious crises in US-Chinese relations since the resumption of full diplomatic relations in 1979.”

While Trump claims a “great relationship” with Xi Jinping, communication channels have largely frozen, with both sides unwilling to blink first. Back-channel diplomacy through figures like former Ambassador Cui Tiankai offers some hope, but long-term damage may already be underway.

Other flashpoints—from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 Taiwan visit to the 2023 spy balloon incident—demonstrate the fragility of the relationship. “These are not a joke,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, even as he admitted, “no one thinks they’re sustainable.”

Trump now faces a critical choice: pursue a coherent, multilateral approach or risk an economic and diplomatic breakdown that could have global repercussions.

By Vafa Guliyeva