Trans-Pacific View | Diplomacy | East Asia

How Donald Trump Doubled Down on the Rhetorical Presidency in His Handling of China

“The Highly Respected President of China”? To better anticipate Trump’s China policy, it is essential to understand his rhetorical strategy.

Just when the world thought U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to China might be indefinitely delayed as the Iran war dragged on, the White House not only finalized his trip for May 15-16 but also announced that he would host Xi Jinping for a reciprocal visit in Washington later this year. More strikingly, Trump referred to Xi as “the Highly Respected President of China” in his post announcing the trip, a notable departure from his usual “President Xi.” 

This shift may appear to be another instance of Trump-style spontaneity. A closer look, however, suggests not only that a new China-U.S. deal may be nearing completion, but also that Trump is doubling down on the “rhetorical presidency” as a tool for managing China-U.S. relations. 

Trump’s second administration is defined by its full embrace of the “imperial presidency,” especially as reflected in its unilateral trade war with the rest of the world. His trade war with China, in particular, last year served as a clear example of his ambition to expand presidential power to an excessive degree. 

Nevertheless, ongoing inflation, a rising budget deficit, and the Iran war have pushed the United States into a precarious position, where even Trump has begun to tread more carefully when dealing with China as both the United States’ largest competitor and a crucial collaborator. His intentional omission of China from his State of the Union earlier this year was a clear signal that the “unitary executive” he has pursued could falter when the China issue risks generating internal conflict within the Republican Party – particularly when critical electoral interests, such as the upcoming midterm elections, are at stake.

Hence, the logic of the “rhetorical presidency” – perhaps to some observers’ surprise – also applies to Trump’s handling of China. As Jeffrey Tulis, the political scientist who coined this concept, argued, “presidential commands are never self-executing” and “their efficacy depends on the artful use of persuasive power in bargaining.” For Trump, every deal he attempts to strike with China is not only a negotiation between two states, but also a negotiation with the American public.

A year after gambling much of his political capital on a failed attempt to reshape the U.S. political system, Trump appears to recognize that he can no longer easily weaponize what he once viewed as an effective diversionary strategy – the “China card,” or a broad anti-China consensus in Washington – to secure legitimacy for his policies. His rapidly eroding position has limited his ability to pressure lawmakers and the public into backing his foreign policy agenda. For a president whose overseas dealmaking and transactional approach have long been framed as serving “MAGA” priorities, his growing expansionism – from ambitions involving Greenland to a military operation in Venezuela and now a prolonged conflict with Iran – has undermined his foreign policy legacy and weakened his reputation as a leader who would avoid entangling the United States in “forever wars.”

At this juncture, a further deterioration in China-U.S. relations would only deepen these challenges. Trump therefore can no longer rely solely on his classic unpredictability to coerce Beijing into favorable negotiations (a tactic that has proven to achieve only limited success), particularly as Chinese policymakers closely monitor his domestic political constraints. In this context, he must provide domestic audiences with a greater sense of........

© The Diplomat