President Donald Trump is gunning for a “comprehensive” trade pact with Beijing ahead of his Oct. 30 meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but top China watchers are asking: At what cost?
Trump has touted a major breakthrough, and both sides say they’ve reached an initial framework that the two leaders will try to seal on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea on Thursday. Experts, however, tell the Daily Caller News Foundation that China’s long history of broken promises should give the president pause.
“The big thing that Trump needs to keep in mind is that no deal is going to be better than a bad deal,” Michael Sobolik, senior fellow at Hudson Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “There is going to need to be some level of American resolve brought into this relationship with China, because as the president has said, they have exploited Americans for years, and changing that is going to be about more than just making sure they buy our goods.”
The president said Monday that Washington and Beijing were poised to “come away with a deal.” While the final terms remain to be seen, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that a 100% tariff on Chinese goods scheduled for Nov. 1 has been averted after speaking with Chinese counterparts in Kuala Lumpur in advance of the anticipated summit.
Trump had announced the 100% levy in early October, stacking it on top of all existing tariffs, in retaliation for Beijing’s expanded export controls on rare earth minerals vital to high-tech manufacturing, from semiconductors to fighter jets. The U.S. imports over 80% of the rare earths it consumes, relying almost entirely on China, which controls more than 90% of global mining and refining capacity.
The rare earth dispute has been a persistent flashpoint in trade talks for months. It ignited in April after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs prompted China to restrict exports of rare earth elements initially. Although a June framework agreement between the two sides called for Beijing to ease those restrictions and expedite shipments, China slow-walked approvals, leading to supply chain disruptions.
Experts say Beijing’s latest escalation — adding five more elements to the controls and extending scrutiny to foreign-made products incorporating Chinese rare earths — was a deliberate bid to bolster its leverage ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting.
In exchange for shelving the 100% tariff, China agreed to delay implementation of its new rare earth licensing system “for a year while they re-examine it,” according to Bessent.
Derek Scissors, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and chief economist of the China Beige Book, said the de-escalation was expected as a 100% tariff would have rattled U.S. markets, which the Trump administration wants to avoid, and China’s export controls are difficult to enforce.
The deeper danger, he argued, lies in Trump’s pursuit of a sweeping deal.
“It’s President Trump’s drive for a comprehensive deal — that’s his word — that becomes a problem,” Scissors told the DCNF. “It’s almost impossible to imagine a comprehensive deal that the Chinese don’t win on, because they won’t keep their side of the deal.”
A key U.S. priority is securing commitments for China to purchase more American agricultural products, as farmers continue to suffer from reduced exports. China halted most soybean imports earlier this year, leaving producers in states like Iowa and Illinois without major buyers for this fall’s harvest.
“If we want the Chinese to buy soy beans, which we do, and Bessent has said they’re going to, what are we giving them for that? And this starts to open the door to trouble,” Scissors said.
Experts say Beijing is likely seeking major concessions in exchange for commitments on soybeans and rare earths, including loosening sanctions on Chinese firms and removing export restrictions on cutting-edge artificial intelligence chips. The administration already lifted curbs on Nvidia’s H20 chips during trade talks in August, but Trump has signaled openness to allowing exports of Nvidia’s far more advanced Blackwell chip.
Scissors and Sobolik both warned that easing chip restrictions would be a mistake, ultimately handing China permanent technological gains for temporary farm relief.
“If this all blows up in six months — the way U.S.-China trade stuff does — China has gotten the biggest gain by far,” Scissors said. “We’ll have gotten some relief for farmers for six months, and they’ll have gotten a new technology that they can’t get themselves.”
Trump has also made clear he will press Xi for real action on stemming the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals, which have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
U.S. and Chinese officials say a preliminary agreement has been reached on fentanyl trafficking, among other issues. It remains unclear, however, whether that will lead to the lifting of the 20% tariff Trump imposed in February on all Chinese exports due to Beijing’s role in the crisis.
China expert and author Gordon Chang expressed deep skepticism that Beijing will follow through, citing decades of broken promises to U.S. presidents, including Trump’s first term.
“What we would be doing is give up something concrete for a mere promise, and we have done that so many times with China, and they just don’t follow through,” Chang told the DCNF. “That tariff should remain in place until fentanyl shipments stop. Once it stops, you can take off the tariff, but not until then.”
Beijing is also expected to push for U.S. concessions on Taiwan — particularly a statement opposing independence — and may link that to Trump’s request that China help end the war in Ukraine by pressuring Russia and halting oil purchases.
“Xi Jinping will definitely try to get some concessions on Taiwan. Under no circumstances should Trump do that, but that is something that he should expect Xi to bring up,” Sobolik said.
Underlying these concerns is China’s repeated failure to honor past trade commitments.
“I don’t believe the Chinese will stop buying Russian oil. I don’t believe the Chinese will obey our export controls. I don’t believe the Chinese are going to drop their export controls in the future,” Scissors said. “Why am I so cynical? Because this is the track record of U.S. negotiations with China, including under Donald Trump.”
Adding to the leverage play, China also ramped up persecution of Christians in recent weeks. After Xi vowed in September to “implement strict law enforcement” against non-state-sanctioned churches, including a new ban on unauthorized online preaching and “foreign collusion,” authorities detained dozens of underground church leaders, according to Reuters.
Sobolik said that the Trump administration should demand the release of these detainees as a precondition for the summit, noting a similar wave of imprisonments targeted Christians just before trade talks in 2018 during Trump’s first term.
“It’s no accident that they’re starting to do it again,” Sobolik said. “The message that President Trump should send is that’s not acceptable, and we’re not going to honor leveraging human lives and the well-being of people and persecuting religious liberty.”
The U.S. has also ramped up pressure on Beijing ahead of the meeting. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office on Oct. 24 launched a new investigation into China’s “apparent failure” to comply with the Phase One trade deal signed in 2020 with Trump, under which Beijing committed to $200 billion in additional purchases of U.S. farm goods, manufactured products, and energy, as well as improvements to intellectual property protections, but never met the targets.
The probe could lead to new tariffs or penalties if violations are confirmed, with a public hearing set for Dec. 16, but the president told reporters on Monday that China may “talk us out of” pursuing the probe.
The administration has also moved in recent weeks to erode China’s leverage in rare earths, signing multiple critical mineral deals with allies such as Australia, Japan and Southeast Asian nations.
“What he is doing is isolating China, and that’s a great thing,” Chang said. “I don’t like the idea of this trade deal in the works with China, but I can see what he’s doing. And I only hope that he is able to take away China’s points of leverage so that in the future, he can have a more resolute posture.”
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