For China, Trump’s Moves Bring Pain, but Also Potential Gains

As President Trump was locked in a war of words with the leader of Colombia over the military deportation of migrants, China’s ambassador to Colombia declared that relations between Beijing and Bogotá were at their “best moment” in decades.

Zhu Jingyang, the ambassador, later said that it was a coincidence that he posted his comment on social media last week, a day after Mr. Trump said he would slap tariffs on Colombia. But the public outreach suggested that Beijing saw an opportunity to strengthen its hand in the high-stakes superpower rivalry between China and the United States.

Two weeks into the second Trump administration, Mr. Trump’s aggressive “America First” foreign policy holds both promise and peril for Beijing.

The perils have always been clear: more tariffs, and the risk of a wider trade war. This weekend, Mr. Trump imposed an additional 10 percent tariffs on goods imported from China, saying the tariffs were a response to China’s failure to curb fentanyl exports. He could answer any retaliation from China with even higher levies.

But even as Beijing calculates the impact of the tariffs on China’s weak economy, it is surely also taking stock of the openings that Mr. Trump’s other moves are giving China.

Mr. Trump has alienated U.S. allies and partners like Canada and Mexico by imposing steep tariffs on their exports. He has weakened America’s global authority by cutting foreign aid and withdrawing from the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement, a U.N. climate pact.

If the second Trump term marks the sunset of Pax Americana, analysts say China will almost certainly use the opportunity to try to reshape the world in its favor. Beijing, which has long accused Washington of using its dominance to contain China’s rise, has tried to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies, including the European Union, Japan and Australia.

“The Chinese are well aware of the damage Trump has done and is doing to U.S. credibility and influence globally. In fact, it is unfolding faster than even Beijing expected,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University who served as an Asia adviser to President Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump’s threats to take the Panama Canal and Greenland, as well as to annex Canada as America’s 51st state could normalize a world order in which might makes right. That is an approach that is familiar to Beijing, even if Chinese officials rhetorically maintain that it will never seek hegemony or expansion.

If the United States strong-arms Panama over its crucial waterway, or forces Denmark to give up the resource-rich territory of Greenland, it sends a signal to China that when it comes to its own claims to the self-governing island of Taiwan and much of the South China Sea, coercion trumps cooperation.

“China was certainly never going to give up Taiwan or the South China Sea, but with President Trump doing what he’s doing, China is even more determined to safeguard its interests there, that’s for sure,” said Henry Huiyao Wang, president of the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing.

Mr. Wang said China has been encouraged by the first two weeks of the new administration despite the tariffs and appointment of hawkish advisers such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser.

Rather than coming out aggressively to confront China, Mr. Trump has presented himself as someone willing to negotiate and potentially cut a deal with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. Mr. Trump has floated the idea of tying tariffs to the fate of TikTok, which he has said should be half-owned by an American company.

Another potential area for deal making is Ukraine. Mr. Trump has said China should help end Russia’s war in the Eastern European country. China, as Russia’s biggest provider of economic and material support, could conceivably pressure President Vladimir V. Putin to come to the negotiation table.

“Trump wants China’s help to end the war in Ukraine,” Mr. Wang said. “China is one of the best partners for him to do that.”

But with so many competing interests, cooperation would be difficult. China has avoided criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, taking the position that Russia has a right to protect its national security. Ukraine will not accept China as a peace broker because of China’s pro-Russian position, said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University in Beijing. Mr. Putin, on the other hand, will not want to look subordinate to China, he said, while Mr. Trump has “no real stomach” to see China lauded for playing a significant role.

On the issue of tariffs, Beijing has to decide if it can afford to escalate a trade war with the United States. On Sunday, it vowed to respond to Mr. Trump’s tariffs by filing a case with the World Trade Organization and with countermeasures to be specified later.

Beijing could hit back with tariffs. A more drastic approach would be for China to engage in “supply chain warfare”: halting shipments to the United States of materials and equipment critical to U.S. industry. In early December, China stopped the export to the United States of minerals like antimony and gallium, which are needed to manufacture some semiconductors.

The risk to China is that a trade war would be more damaging to itself than it would be for the United States. Exports, and the construction of factories to make them, are among the few strengths now in China’s economy. As a result, China’s trade surplus — the amount by which its exports exceeded imports — reached almost $1 trillion last year.

China has also not yet said how it will respond to a potentially farther-reaching provision in the fine print of Mr. Trump’s executive order on Saturday: the elimination of duty-free handling for packages worth up to $800 per day for each American. Factories all over China have shifted in recent years to e-commerce shipments directly to American homes, so as to bypass the many tariffs collected on clothing and other goods that are imported and sold through American stores.

In the race for global influence, some argue that the Trump administration’s move to freeze most foreign aid, which has disrupted aid programs around the world, has already benefited China.

In regions like Southeast Asia, where attitudes toward the United States have hardened because of Washington’s support for Israel in the Gaza war, the halt in funding has raised questions about American reliability.

“China needs to do nothing in the meantime, and yet, somehow, net-net, look like the good guy in all of this,” said Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst on China at the Eurasia Group.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, defended the importance of soft power to America’s standing.

“If you don’t get involved in the world and you don’t have programs in Africa, where China is trying to buy the whole continent, we’re making a mistake,” he said last month.