Trump heads to APEC with China trade commitments unresolved

Congressional shift may complicate China’s technology agenda

President Trump heads to Shenzhen next week for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit with key Chinese trade commitments unfulfilled. Since a deal struck a year ago in the South Korean city of Busan, Beijing has fallen short of its commitments on agricultural purchases and rare earth exports. The trip follows a midterm loss in which Democrats captured both the House and Senate, a result The Wall Street Journal said was more sweeping than Obama’s in 2014 and described as “what amounted to a repudiation of his presidency.” The outlet said Xi Jinping would use the hosting opportunity to show off China’s tech-driven modernity, even as his team and Trump’s wrangle behind the scenes over plans for an unprecedented three-way meeting involving Trump, Xi and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The outlet framed the stakes conditionally: Beijing may read the midterm results as an opening to extract concessions from a weakened Trump, but that reading could leave a president more inclined to harden his position.

The commitments left open

China also restricted diesel exports just weeks before the midterm elections. Beijing said the move was aimed at ensuring domestic supply; analysts noted it “compounded global energy pressures at a vulnerable political moment for Trump.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Friday that they had stressed the importance of China honoring its Busan commitments to Vice Premier He Lifeng, whom The Wall Street Journal identified as Xi’s economic point man. The outlet said China’s unkept commitments will likely alter the dynamic heading into Shenzhen.

How each side may read the midterms

Matt Turpin, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution who served on Trump’s National Security Council during his first term, said: “I suspect Trump feels that Xi intentionally screwed him on the midterms.” If that is how Trump sees the result, The Wall Street Journal said, he has little motivation to offer Xi concessions, including on Taiwan, where Beijing earlier this year secured a freeze on U.S. arms sales and has been pressing for rhetorical policy shifts that favor its sovereignty claims over the island.

The outlet also pointed to Trump’s choice of Stephen Miller, described as “a hard-line immigration architect,” to replace Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff, a signal that “suggests he is more inclined to double down than moderate his approach after the defeat.”

On the Chinese side, The Wall Street Journal wrote: “One alarming dynamic in the bilateral relationship is the absence of moderating voices on the Chinese side.” Turpin noted there are only “America hawks” in the Chinese system—“no ‘America doves.’” The outlet said the pattern was even more pronounced under Xi’s consolidation of power, where “the internal incentive is always to be tougher on the U.S., never softer.”

The outlet paired that consensus with what it called “a dangerous blind spot.” Turpin said: “Chinese Communist Party leaders really don’t understand the relationship between the president and Congress.” He added: “They largely mirror image and assume the U.S. political system works like theirs.”

The Wall Street Journal’s conclusion was conditional: Beijing may see the midterm results as an opportunity to extract concessions from a weakened Trump, but that could “prove a serious miscalculation, pushing a president stung by his midterm defeat toward a harder line on China.”

The outlet’s assessment of the summit itself: “The real danger at Shenzhen may be that Xi arrives thinking he has the upper hand over a weakened Trump, when what’s actually sitting across the table is a president who suspects his Chinese counterpart might just have cost him Congress.”

The new Democratic majority and technology controls

On the U.S. side, Turpin expects Democratic congressional leadership to focus on investigating the last two years, uncovering corruption, going after the technology industry and setting the stage for the 2028 presidential election. Unlike the final years of the Biden administration, when a Republican House worked with a Democratic White House to build a bipartisan consensus on China, Turpin said the foreign-policy energy is more likely to flow toward Israel, Iran and Russia.

But the new Democratic majority could make things harder for Beijing on technology controls, The Wall Street Journal said. China has long sought the elimination of U.S. restrictions on high-tech sales. Amid revelations that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had an affair with a data-industry executive suspected of being a Chinese intelligence source, Sen. Chris Coons wrote on X: “The more I learn about the insane relationship between the Trump Administration, Chinese spies, and AI billionaires, the more I’m convinced there is nothing this administration does that isn’t corrupt. Congress will investigate and get answers.” The outlet said loosening technology controls in that environment would be a tough sell.

The outlet also reported that Nvidia’s board opened an investigation into whether Huang had been targeted, and that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang apologized to employees for marital infidelity in a note that also addressed his family. The episode comes amid reports that the U.S. government suspects a former executive he was involved with of sharing information with Chinese intelligence.

A negotiating pattern under strain

Trump’s second term has swung between threats and enticements toward Beijing — ratcheting up tariffs one month and talking about a big deal the next, The Wall Street Journal said. Turpin said: “That approach has yielded very little and is unlikely to yield a breakthrough over the next year.” He added: “But it’s the style that President Trump prefers and I’m not aware of too many 80-year-olds that change their style even when it isn’t working.”

The 2014 comparison

The Wall Street Journal cautioned: “The parallels are tempting, but the dynamics between these two powers are nothing like those of 2014.” In November 2014, days after Democrats suffered a bruising midterm defeat, President Obama traveled to Beijing for an annual gathering of Pacific Rim leaders and a state visit, and Xi Jinping, “sensing his counterpart’s weakened position,” subjected Obama to hours of lectures on Chinese history and governance. Turpin said: “Xi felt confident that the United States under Obama’s leadership wasn’t going to confront the People’s Republic of China.” China’s economy was expanding at more than 7% at the time while the post-financial-crisis West struggled, Washington still embraced free trade with China, and the outlet described the Chinese leader as “riding high.”

The outlet said China’s economy is in far worse shape than it was 12 years ago, and that Xi faces a sensitive political year in 2027, when a leadership reshuffle at the 21st Party Congress would demand his full attention. Its analysis: “A volatile relationship with Washington would be the last thing he wants.” The Wall Street Journal added that “the Chinese leader still can’t seem to resist pressing his leverage, with Beijing’s actions suggesting it may already be overplaying its hand.”

From The Wall Street Journal’s China newsletter

Imprisoned Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong received an additional National Security Law sentence after pleading guilty to foreign collusion charges, The Wall Street Journal reported. Human rights groups condemned the move as “politically motivated to keep him detained.”

The outlet said Australia’s “proactive diplomacy” and new security pacts with what it called “Western-friendly Pacific nations” — Vanuatu, Fiji and Papua New Guinea — have “blunted China’s regional momentum,” reinforcing broader U.S. efforts to counter Beijing in the Pacific.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal asked how long Beijing can have both — wanting foreign capital but unwilling to give foreign investors equal access to information. Readers shared their thoughts in the newsletter, written by WSJ Chief China Correspondent Lingling Wei with help from Zhao Yueling.

Chris Niksch of Germany wrote: “As an international investor, the problems you highlight in your article show the dangers of information asymmetry for investors. In the long run, this can only mean that international investors (like myself) will be hurt by selectively published information. Chinese companies, however, are most likely unable to become more transparent because they can’t upset local politicians. So while Alibaba, Tencent and other companies seem like interesting investments, I would probably have to give them a hard pass now to avoid getting caught in potential bad news in the future.”

Charles Dodd of Texas wrote: “Beijing has repeatedly shown that they will not shy away from cutting information flow that makes the data (or country) look bad. China’s pattern of prioritizing narrative control over transparency makes clear which it values more. For foreign investors, that just seems to create this never-ending cycle of the less transparent the market becomes, the larger the risk premium investors demand, which in turn makes attracting durable foreign capital harder.”

Steve Andrews of California wrote: “I think the ability to segment information between Chinese and foreign investors has already run its course. The recent drop in value of Chinese stocks is evidence of skepticism that the numbers reported by Chinese companies (and the government) are accurate and reliable. Once trust is gone, how can you justify giving them money?” The responses were condensed and edited.