Beijing warns countries against colluding with US to restrict trade with China

Beijing has warned its trading partners against succumbing to US pressure to isolate China in President Donald Trump’s tariff war, as part of its carrot-and-stick approach to win over countries caught between the world’s two largest economies.

Commenting on recent media reports about the Trump administration’s plans to pressure countries into restricting trade with China in exchange for exemptions from US tariffs, a spokesperson for China’s Commerce Ministry said on Monday: “Appeasement does not bring peace, and compromise does not earn respect.”

“Seeking temporary self-interest at the expense of others — in exchange for so-called exemptions — is like asking a tiger for its skin. In the end, it will achieve nothing and harm both others and oneself,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests. If such a situation arises, China will not accept it and will resolutely take reciprocal countermeasures,” the spokesperson added.

The stern warning comes on the heels of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s charm offensive in Southeast Asia, where he presented China as a reliable partner and staunch defender of global trade – in stark contrast to the tariff whiplash and policy uncertainty of the Trump administration.

Pressure has been piling on countries and businesses alike as they try to thread the needle between the two economic superpowers, which have slapped record tariffs on each other in a swiftly escalating fight that has roiled global markets, disrupted supply chains and stoked recession fears.

On April 9, Trump paused his “reciprocal” tariffs on most nations for 90 days while narrowing the focus of his historic trade war squarely on China, hiking levies on Chinese imports to a staggering 145%. Many countries are hoping to renegotiate the levies with the US before the suspension expires.

In response, China retaliated by raising tariffs on US goods to 125% and adding more American companies on its export control list and unreliable entity list. Beijing also moved to exert pain on key US industries, restricting the number of Hollywood movies shown in the country and returning at least two Boeing jets intended for use by Chinese airlines to the US.

With the US and China at each other’s throats on tariffs, neither leader is backing down – and both are looking to build a broad coalition of countries against the other.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Trump administration planned to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure US trading partners to limit their dealings with China, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the conversations.

The idea is to extract commitments from US trading partners to isolate China’s economy in exchange for reductions in trade and tariff barriers imposed by the White House, including asking nations to disallow China to ship goods through their countries, prevent Chinese firms from setting up in their territories to avoid US tariffs and not absorb China’s cheap industrial goods into their economies, the WSJ reported.

For its part, China has sought to capitalize on the chaos and uncertainty unleashed by Trump and rally countries to its side.

In his first foreign trip this year, Xi visited Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia last week, signing a barrage of bilateral cooperation agreements and pledging to uphold free and open trade. The three export-reliant economies were hit by US “reciprocal” tariffs of up to 49% before the levies were paused.

Chinese officials have also held calls and talks with counterparts in Japan, South Korea and the European Union to push for closer economic cooperation.

But while countries appear receptive to Beijing’s outreach, they are also wary of being flooded with cheap Chinese goods that are now shut out of the US markets due to the sky-high tariffs – and the risk of provoking Trump for siding with China. Beijing’s own record of economic coercion, aggressive trade practices and assertive military posturing in the region is not helping, either.

Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said despite China’s overtures, countries are not “jumping at the chance to partner with China.”

“For many of these countries, even when China is a larger trading partner, the United States is often a much larger export market. So they have significant stakes with the US economy as well,” she said.

And even as Xi launches his charm offensive, Beijing is not stopping its military assertiveness in the region, Economy added, citing Chinese live-fire drills in waters near Australia and New Zealand in February, ongoing aggression against Taiwan, the Philippines in the South China Sea and Japan over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

“They’re not stepping back in terms of their security ambitions even as they’re trying to promote themselves as a stabilizing economic force. So I think that charm offensive needs to be more all-embracing if Xi Jinping is actually going to realize the kinds of benefits that I think he wants from what President Trump is doing,” she said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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