Bulletin N°61 2025 Presidents Trump and Xi Jiping met on October 30 in Pusan in South Korea. They had not seen each other since 2019. It is in a context of exacerbation of tensions between imperialist powers that this meeting took place. Recall that China is considered by the United States as a systemic enemy. Thus, in 2015 Obama in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on April 27, 2015 stated: "If the United States fails to conclude and adopt a multilateral free trade agreement in Asia, then China will not hesitate to seize the economic vacuum created by the Americans." This heavy tendency to designate China as the main competitor of the United States, we have described it as the shift of clashes within imperialism towards the Asia-Pacific zone. In recent decades, China has not only become the world’s leading manufacturing country, which made it known as the "workshop of the world", but also a global centre for scientific and technical development. Its expertise in the fields of energy, transport, medicine, space, communications... make it a very active competitor on the international level. At the same time, its military power has increased, particularly in the maritime domain. On the other hand, the United States has continued its decline in the industrial and manufacturing field and even if its GAFA are at the top of the gondola, their material production is largely ensured outside the United States and especially in Asia. On the other hand, their military power does not experience any significant decline, nor does their presence in the world through their 800 military bases present in 177 countries with 200,000 men.
With his MAGA (Make America Great Again) Trump and his team intend to restore industrial power to the United States by making their companies competitive in the global capitalist market and by attracting, or even forcing the hand of their allies3 , a flow of investment to their territory.
This is the whole point of the trade war underway, the most dramatic aspect of which is the increase in tariffs for countries exporting goods to the United States. While the European Union has yielded to its own detriment in this game, China has not, systematically retaliating against attempts to impose exorbitant tariffs. The latest threat, ultimately abandoned, was to add a 100% increase to the 57% already in place. To counter this trade war aggression, China has decided to impose strict controls on its rare earth exports. It's worth remembering that it extracts 60% and refines 90% of global production. Without rare earths, without lithium, there is no communication technology, nor any way to build batteries for new modes of transportation. This situation has obviously weighed heavily on the major American communication monopolies in Silicon Valley. Trump obviously had this question in mind when he disembarked from his helicopter in Busan to meet Xi Jinping.
His attempt to impress Xi Jinping by threatening to resume nuclear testing backfired4, this issue wasn't even raised, nor were the war in Ukraine, tensions with Taiwan, or China's purchase of Russian oil. It's possible to say, as the newspaper Le Monde did , that " Trump overestimated these forces " and was forced to adopt a more conciliatory approach.
In the end, the meeting produced a minimal and fragile agreement. Trump reinstated tariffs on China to 47%. This is still significant, but China has begun to adapt to the situation by diversifying its trade relations. It agreed to resume purchasing soybeans from the United States, which will satisfy American producers, but does not represent a major issue given the availability of other sources of supply worldwide. We can therefore consider this a low-cost diplomatic gesture. Regarding China's trump card, rare earth elements, it committed to suspending export restrictions on these elements for one year, giving it a trump card it can play at any time.
While the truce between China and the United States signals a certain ascendancy for China, it's fair to say that the fundamental issues remain unresolved. As history shows, conflicts within imperialism experience phases of varying intensity, interspersed with periods of truce. Significantly, after the meeting, Trump returned to the United States, and Xi Jinping headed to the APEC 5 conference .
1 https://www.sitecommunistes.org/index.php/monde/monde/1460-le-centre-des-affrontements-au-sein-de-l-imperialisme-se-deplace-vers-la-zone-asie-pacifique
4. Trump used Russia's nuclear-powered missile tests as a pretext to announce, rather vaguely, the resumption of nuclear testing. It should be noted that neither Russia nor China has conducted such tests since 1990, thus respecting existing international agreements.