Hi, China Watchers. Today we look at how Trump’s latest tariffs may affect U.S.-China ties, check-in on the prospects of a TikTok sale and examine the Czech Republic’s tightening ties with Taiwan.

Let’s get to it. — Phelim.

Trump’s new tariffs may prod Beijing to the bargaining table

President Donald Trump’s new 54 percent tariffs on China could finally deliver him a meeting with China’s leader Xi Jinping to hammer out a wide-ranging trade deal, trade experts predict.

“The only way this gets resolved is through a leader-level summit that both leaders would have to be open to, but China is backed into a corner with a tariff rate this high,” said Emily Kilcrease, former deputy assistant U.S. Trade Representative from 2019 to 2021.

Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in meeting Xi since the two spoke in January after Trump’s electoral victory. Last month the U.S. president told reporters that he expected Xi to come to Washington for a summit “in the not too distant future,” per the New York Times.

Xi has shown no sign of wanting to meet Trump. But he may now see such a meeting as a possible shortcut to paring back the new tariffs.

“Up until this point, there wasn’t much prospect for a real negotiation because China wanted to wait and see what Trump was going to do with further tariffs,” said Christopher Adams, former senior coordinator for China affairs at the Treasury Department.

Trump announced a 34 percent “reciprocal” tariff on Chinese imports Wednesday that on April 9 will add to existing 20 percent levies that the administration imposed earlier this year. That comes on top of existing tariffs imposed during the first Trump administration.

Those tariff levels will hammer China’s export-driven economy at a time when the country’s leadership is struggling with anemic growth rates.

“Unless tariffs come down, U.S. trade with China will dry up. Any tariff above 50 percent should mean no trade over like three to four years,” said Brad Setser, who served as deputy assistant secretary for international economic analysis at the Treasury Department during the Obama administration.

The tariffs, as POLITICO’s Daniel Desrochers wrote Wednesday, are now a major test of “whether the president can lure the United States’ top economic rival to the bargaining table.”

Trump pitched his “Liberation Day” tariffs as a tool to compel trading partners to lower levies on U.S. exports and to encourage foreign firms to produce their goods in the United States. China’s $295 billion trade deficit with the U.S. in 2024 — more than a quarter of the total U.S. trade deficit with all trading partners — made Beijing a major target.

The Chinese embassy didn’t respond to a request for comment on the latest levies. Beijing’s last public comment on the looming tariffs was Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning’s assertion last month that the Trump administration was “weaponizing trade issues to contain and go after China.” Mao warned that a tariff war would “hurt the one who launched it.”

Now the question is whether Xi and the senior Chinese Communist Party leadership are ready to dig in for a costly trade war.

“The top leadership seems to have had the mindset that ‘we can eat bitterness’ and get through this and we have ways to hit back,” said Adams, who’s now a senior adviser at the law firm Covington & Burling.

If Xi decides he wants to negotiate, he does have one potentially very big card. Trump is anxious to seal a deal that will allow the sale of TikTok by its Beijing-based parent firm ByteDance. The deadline for that deal is Saturday and requires Beijing’s consent.

ABOUT THAT TIKTOK CLIFFHANGER

There’s furious speculation about whether Trump — with requisite assistance from the Chinese government — will get ByteDance to sell the app by the Saturday deadline that Trump imposed in an Executive Order in January. Or whether he’ll just extend TikTok’s ability to operate in the U.S. in hopes of landing such a deal later this year.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One late Sunday that there were “a lot of potential buyers” and that he expected a deal prior to the Saturday deadline, per Reuters. But his suggestion that he might trade lower tariffs on China in exchange for a deal that would push ByteDance out of its TikTok ownership fell flat with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as POLITICO’s Anthony Adragna reported Wednesday.

Trump and senior administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were due to consider “a final proposal” for TikTok on Wednesday, CBS News reported. But it’s unclear if any such deal would require ByteDance to fully divest control of the app and sever the firm from its access to its algorithms and user data. Those should be “non-negotiable” conditions for any agreement,” House Select Committee on China Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) said in an op-ed last month. Stay tuned.

TRANSLATING WASHINGTON

— LAWMAKERS WANT A ‘JIMMY LAI WAY’: A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill Tuesday that would rename a piece of Washington’s road network after imprisoned Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai. The bill — co-sponsored by Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — will rechristen a block of 18th Street NW from Church Street NW to P Street NW “Jimmy Lai Way.” That’s a tribute to Lai’s commitment to “the values of democracy, human rights, respect for the rule of law, religious freedom, freedom of expression, and media freedom,” the bill said. Hong Kong’s government called that move “despicable political manipulations” in a statement Wednesday.

Despite wide bipartisan dismay at Beijing’s repressive rule in the territory, it’s not clear that such a bill would be a priority on Capitol Hill anytime soon. The House and Senate are struggling to agree on a budget needed to enact Trump’s domestic agenda amid partisan infighting over the administration’s severe cost-cutting.

— CONGRESS SEEKS SUPPORT FOR TAIWAN’S ALLIES: A bipartisan coalition of 17 lawmakers in the House and the Senate introduced legislation Tuesday that will provide a financial lifeline to Taiwan’s official and unofficial diplomatic allies. The Taiwan Allies Fund Act will funnel “$120 million over three years to provide foreign assistance to Taiwan’s official and unofficial partners subjected to coercion and pressure from the Chinese Communist Party,” according to a statement from the House Select Committee on China. Backers of the bill include committee Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and John Curtis (R-Utah). Beijing isn’t pleased.

Despite that bipartisan support, the bill could get a cold shoulder on Capitol Hill given the GOP majority emphasis on cost-cutting and its hostility to funding to foreign countries led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.

“We urge relevant members of the U.S. Congress to stop playing the ‘Taiwan card,’ stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, stop supporting and conniving at “Taiwan independence” separatist forces, and stop undermining China-US relations,” said Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu on Wednesday.

TRANSLATING EUROPE

Sen. Pavel Fischer is an independent Czech lawmaker who chairs the legislature’s committee on foreign affairs, defense and security. Fischer got on the phone with China Watcher earlier this month while on an official visit to Taiwan to attend its annual Yushan Forum on international diplomacy.

Fischer spoke of how pragmatism and history are powering deepening ties between the self-governing island and the Czech Republic.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

How do deeper security ties with Taiwan benefit the Czech Republic?

Mutually beneficial relations cover not only culture or economy, but more and more the question of security and defense. Industries and investors are more and more keen on building secure supply chains.

We have to be aware not only of the toxicity of dependence on Russia — as we have seen in this terrible war, when we discovered how dependent we were on Russia for crude oil, gas and nuclear fuel for power plants.

That similar dependency on China also was very detrimental to our very sovereignty during pandemic times. More and more we see that this is not only for medical items, but for microchips. So we have to engage them as soon as possible for economic security and energy security.

Central European countries including the Czech Republic and Lithuania are more ambitious than their larger neighbors in engaging with Taiwan. Why is that?

When I read about the history of the Communist Party of China, I had to rediscover all the atrocities that the communists did in my own country. I rediscovered all the injustice and violence and persecution that my own family and our friends were exposed to.

The experience in Europe with communist regimes should be enough for us to be cautious [toward China].

The late president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, often told me that China respects even those small countries or medium countries if they are sure of their values. If we start to hesitate, we have a problem. And I think that this is our problem currently — we are not outspoken enough.

HOT FROM THE CHINA WATCHERSPHERE

— BEIJING TARGETS TAIWAN WITH ‘PUNISHMENT’ DRILLS: The People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command launched a second day of live-fire drills on Wednesday to test “troops’ capabilities in regional control, joint blockade, and precision strike,” China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. That followed PLA exercises aimed to “close in on Taiwan Island from multiple directions” on Tuesday. Those drills were “a resolute punishment” for Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s blatant “Taiwan independence” provocations,” Zhu Fenglian, a State Council Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson, told Chinese state media.

Taiwan and the U.S. were quick to criticize the actions. Beijing’s tactics “threaten peace in the #Taiwan Strait but also undermine security in the entire region,” Taiwan’s presidential office spokesperson said in an X post Tuesday. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce piled on by accusing Beijing of “intimidation tactics and destabilizing behavior” in a statement Tuesday.

— MANILA WARNS ON TAIWAN INVASION RISK: Armed Forces of the Philippines’ chief Romeo Brawner said Tuesday that the country will “inevitably” be drawn into the conflict if China invades Taiwan. “Start planning for actions in case there is an invasion of Taiwan,” Brawner said in a speech to military personnel on northern Luzon island per The Straits Times.

Beijing barked back. “We urge certain people in the Philippines to refrain from making provocations and playing with fire on the Taiwan question,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Wednesday.

— HONG KONG HOWLS AT U.S. SANCTIONS: The Hong Kong government slammed the State Department’s imposition of new sanctions targeting six senior judicial and security officials. The sanctions are “despicable” and “exposed the U.S.’ barbarity under its hegemony,” said a government statement Tuesday.

Those on the State Department sanctions list include Hong Kong Police Commissioner Raymond Chak Lee Siu and Assistant Police Commissioner Dick Chung Chun Wong. The State Department accuses them of “actions or policies that threaten to further erode the autonomy of Hong Kong in contravention of China’s commitments, and in connection with acts of transnational repression,” said a State Department statement issued Monday. The sanctions block their access to “all property and interests in property” the six might have in the U.S., the statement said.

That same day, State imposed sanctions on an unspecified number of Chinese officials for their role in denying “U.S. diplomats, journalists, and other international observers access to the Tibet Autonomous Region,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Monday.

Beijing called the sanctions a violation of China’s sovereignty. “China will take necessary reciprocal countermeasures against the U.S.’ wrong move,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Tuesday when asked about the sanctions.

HEADLINES

PBS: After devastating earthquake in Myanmar, China filling vacuum left by USAID’s absence

Hong Kong Free Press: ‘Serious loss in Chinese-language media landscape’: US cuts force Radio Free Asia subsidiary Whynot to go dark

Tampa Bay Times: New College fires Chinese professor under controversial Florida law

Wired: Inside Maye Musk’s cozy relationship with China

HEADS UP

— XI IS SOUTHEAST ASIA-BOUND: China’s leader Xi Jinping will make the rounds of three Southeast Asian countries later this month, the South China Morning Post reported Monday. Xi’s diplomatic tour includes stops in Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam. Expect Xi to peddle a narrative of China as the region’s reliable trade partner in contrast to the Trump administration’s barrage of tariffs on U.S. trading partners.

— ANOTHER HIGH PROFILE TRIP: Trump administration officials may also be Asia-bound this month. National security adviser Mike Waltz will go to India this month to roll out U.S.-India cooperation initiatives in sectors including “high technology, critical minerals and export controls,” India’s Millennium Post reported last month. Waltz may have company if Vice President JD Vance opts to tag along. Vance postponed his plan to visit India last month — possibly because his Greenland trip got in the way — but Indian authorities are expecting him “in the coming months” India’s Economic Times reported in March. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Thanks to: Heidi Vogt, Daniel Desrochers, Anthony Adragna, Emma Cordover and Dean Southwell.

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