The jury was out on the future of China-US relations at an annual forum in Hong Kong on Friday, with a former American ambassador seeing a downward trend under Donald Trump and other observers suggesting that Trump’s transactional approach could mean attempts to reach deals between the two rivals.
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On the sidelines of the US-China Hong Kong Forum, Max Baucus, US ambassador to China between 2014 and 2017, said Trump’s return to the White House “is not business as usual”, and that US-China relations under Trump 2.0 could be “rocky at first and some bumps in the road” if the president-elect did not change tack.
Baucus said the two countries could move towards decoupling, and while the relationship would not break, it “could not get better either”.
He said the main tensions with China might be economic – rather than geopolitical – and include issues such as tariffs and export controls. Trump has proposed a 60 per cent tariff on goods from China and a 20 per cent tariff on everything else the United States imports.
“China would like to work with the US as much as possible, but if the US gets too belligerent economically, that is going to force China to adjust, and China may retaliate in some selective way,” Baucus said at the event organised by the China-United States Exchange Foundation.
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“China will certainly double down and build up its own self-sufficiency in key core industries and technologies. China may also start to do business with other countries.”