Trump targets China with biggest salvo so far in second term
US President Donald Trump has rolled out a memorandum telling a key government committee to curb Chinese spending on tech, energy and other strategic American sectors
THE Trump administration took aim at China with a series of moves involving investment, trade and other issues that raises the risk ties may soon worsen between the US and its top economic rival.
In recent days, US President Donald Trump has rolled out a memorandum telling a key government committee to curb Chinese spending on tech, energy and other strategic American sectors. The administration also called on Mexican officials to place their own levies on Chinese imports – a move that comes after some firms from the Asian nation shifted production to the US neighbour to avoid duties the Republican enacted in his first term.
The US also proposed fees on the use of commercial ships made in China to counter the nation’s dominance in the production of the vessels. Chinese shipping stocks fell on Monday (Feb 24), while the benchmark CSI 300 Index slipped 0.2 per cent. The yuan traded onshore rose 0.1 per cent to 7.2480 versus the US dollar as at 4.21 pm in Shanghai.
Taken together, the steps amount to the most sweeping, forceful actions targeting Beijing of Trump’s fledgling second term and could complicate a deal to reduce China’s trade surplus with the US that the president has indicated he wants to forge.
The memo containing the order to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US – a secretive panel that scrutinises proposals by foreign entities to buy US companies or property – seems to be the most impactful of the flurry of moves. Referring to Beijing as a “foreign adversary”, it said the changes are needed to protect “the crown jewels of United States technology, food supplies, farmland, minerals, natural resources, ports, and shipping terminals”.
“This is likely a disappointment for Beijing, which hoped to offer a large-scale investments in the US as a concession in a negotiation,” said Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “This calls into question whether the US would be open to that kind of investment.”
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China’s expenditure into North America tumbled at the end of last year below levels seen during the worst of the pandemic – a slide likely due to prospective investors waiting to see if Trump would win the election in November – and the curbs present a new obstacle to any recovery in that figure.
After the memorandum was released, Beijing urged Washington to stop weaponizing economic and trade issues. The US government’s push to strengthen reviews of business ties on security grounds would seriously undermine the confidence of Chinese companies investing in the US, the Ministry of Commerce said.
The memorandum also said the US government should also review a 1984 tax deal with China that frees individuals and companies from double taxation. “Eliminating these kind of treaties just makes things very uncertain and complicated for investors because they do not know if they are going to be taxed,” Chorzempa said.
Stocks scrutiny
The memo also revived an issue related to the accounting practices of some foreign firms, including those trading on American exchanges such as Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com, saying the US government would ensure its rules are being adequately followed.
Back in 2022, Beijing and Washington resolved a dispute over accounting practices that could have led to the delisting of companies such as Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com, with US officials saying they had gained sufficient access to audit documents on companies in China and Hong Kong for the first time.
Enforcement of US rules would be “tighter than ever” because of the memorandum, said Winston Ma, adjunct law professor at New York University.
Also, a call in the memo for new and expanded limits on investment from US pension and endowment funds in high-tech sectors in China could affect companies along the Asian nation’s artificial intelligence supply chains, UBS Group said. The rule could impact hardware, software and Internet firms, strategists including James Wang wrote.
And the Trump administration called for a review of arrangement known as “variable interest entity” that Chinese firms use to list on American exchanges. It also pledged to look into “allegations of fraudulent behaviour by these companies”, without going into details.
Shipping
The outline for a plan for fees on Chinese-built ships that carry traded goods also has mandates requiring that a portion of US products be moved on American vessels. It results from an inquiry into Beijing’s practices in the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding industries that started during the Biden administration and ended with a report days before Trump took office.
China’s share of global shipbuilding capacity has surged over the past decade to account for around half of new builds, partly driven by its own domestic demand for more ships. The country’s fleet was valued at US$255.2 billion in January, the biggest total globally, according to the analytics platform VesselsValue. Japan was second at US$231.4 billion, while the US ranked fourth at US$116.4 billion.
Shares of Cosco Shipping Holdings, which was earlier blacklisted by the Defense Department over alleged links to the People’s Liberation Army, fell 4.6 per cent in Hong Kong. Orient Overseas International retreated 3 per cent.
When asked about the proposed shipping fee at a regular press briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the US should “respect the rule of law and stop their wrongdoing”.
Underscoring the divide between the two economic powers, last week Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng expressed “serious concern” over a 10 per cent tariff hike that Trump earlier place on goods from the Asian country. He made the comments in a call with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who raised a host of issues with China, including “economic imbalances”.
China’s US$295 billion trade surplus with the US looms large in the new administration’s list of worries, though Trump has said he may be able to reach a fresh deal with Beijing, following one during his first term. “It’s possible, it’s possible,” he said last week. Trump earlier threatened tariffs of 60 per cent on Chinese goods – a level that would devastate trade between the nations – and has ordered his administration to investigate whether Beijing had complied with the trade agreement clinched in 2020.
The Bessent-He call came weeks after the new tariffs took effect, hitting the entirety of Chinese goods shipped to the US. Trump linked them to complaints over Chinese production of precursors for illicit fentanyl heading to America, exacerbating a deadly opioid crisis.
The rising China-US tensions come as Trump pushes to end the war in Ukraine, a move that started with landmark discussions earlier this month between Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. While China would welcome an end to the war because it would help improve its ties with Europe, it raises the possibility that once the fighting ends Washington would turn its full attention to Beijing. BLOOMBERG
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