Why U.S. allies aren’t rushing to back Trump’s China
trade war
(Carlos
Barria/Reuters)
Even by Trump administration
standards, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a controversial White
House guest. He is widely regarded as an autocrat in Europe; presidents
George W. Bush and Barack Obama had pointedly avoided hosting him.
But it’s Trump’s Washington now.
And with the Dow Jones industrial average tanking on Monday by more than 600 points amid a
fresh round of tit-for-tat tariffs in the U.S.-China trade war, the
president welcomed Orban to the White House — perhaps less worried about
his illiberal policies and more about finding an ally in the battle against
Beijing.
Ken Weinstein, president of the
conservative Hudson Institute think tank, suggested to Politico that China was
the most pressing reason for Orban’s visit, saying the subtext of the trip
was “likely China, on Orbán’s relations with the Chinese and trying to get
greater cooperation on this issue.”
Yet despite some signs of personal
affinity, Orban is likely to disappoint Trump on China. Under his
leadership, Hungary has grown close to Beijing in recent years, part of a
turn away from the West that has also seen the nation build ties with
Russian President Vladimir Putin. Orban opened up the country to telecom
giant Huawei Technologies and was the first European Union leader to
express support for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese President
Xi Jinping’s massive international infrastructure investment that is
frequently criticized in Washington.
Just last month, Orban visited
Beijing, where Chinese state media
reported that he said BRI was “an opportunity rather than a threat.”
Shouldn’t Orban be lining up with
Trump on China? Hungary is a NATO ally, and the tough-talking prime
minister was an early supporter of Trump’s presidential campaign. He has
aligned with Trump on a host of controversial international issues,
including immigration and religion.
Meanwhile, China’s unfair trade
policies, egregious human rights abuses and worrying geopolitical ambitions
pose a problem for countries all over the world. The United States is also
the larger economic power, and most experts say Washington can inflict far
more pain on the Chinese economy than Beijing can deal to the U.S. economy
in retaliation.
But instead, Orban looks like he is
sitting on the fence.
The truth is, Hungary is far from
the only U.S. ally to try to avoid picking sides in the trade war.
And it’s not too hard to see why when you consider how much other countries
have to lose. Americans are worried about this week’s stock market tumble,
but that outlook is far worse for countries that aren’t an economic
behemoth like the United States.
Some nations are particularly
hesitant to move away from the Chinese economic links they’ve established
in the last few years. Huawei, the telecommunications firm at the center of
American anxiety about Chinese influence in Hungary, is an excellent case
in point.
Washington may warn of security
risks, but low-cost technology from Huawei is already in place for numerous
U.S. allies; removing it ahead of upgrades to 5G
networks would be prohibitively expensive for many countries, and the
United States would do little to make up for the cost.
There is some serious collateral
damage from Trump’s tariffs, too. Some targeting Beijing, such as those on
steel and aluminum imports based on “national security," have also
significantly hit U.S. allies. Rather than rallying potential allies to the
China fight, Trump’s unilateral trade actions are punishing them, too.
If the trade war intensifies, they
might end up stuck between Washington and Beijing. Canada already found
that out the hard way after it arrested Huawei’s chief financial officer,
Meng Wanzhou, on an American warrant in December. The impact wasn’t just
financial: Two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, have
been detained in China since the end of last year on deeply dubious charges.
The Trump administration loves to
talk tough on trade and foreign policy. Over-the-top, arguably xenophobic language
against China by Trump allies and surrogates may have pushed some allies
away, especially as the administration veers close to conflict in Iran,
Venezuela and North Korea.
But it’s not just the Trump
administration’s hawkish leanings that may worry allies. It’s also its
unpredictably dovish ones. Only a week ago, most of the world expected
Trump, a lover of signing deals, to accept a watered-down agreement from
China. Now the trade war is back and bigger than ever.
Trump’s apparent U-turn seems to
have been motivated largely by China’s slow-rolling of negotiations. But
some pundits also believe that Trump is positioning himself
for the 2020 presidential election, when he believes that China could
become a major issue in the battle against a Democratic challenger. Could
Trump back down again, should the economy take a harder hit or the
political calculation change in another way?
In that scenario, Beijing’s
relations with Washington might improve, but its smaller allies might
remain exposed (see here: Canada). Even if Trump
keeps a hard line on China, he might fail to win a second term. It is
unclear who would replace him and what their China policy might be.
This unpredictability may help in
hard bilateral negotiations, but it doesn’t exactly foster alliances. Given
the circumstances, it’s not surprising that weaker allies are staying out
of the fray. Writing from Australia over the weekend, the New York Times’s Neil Irwin
noted that the “bifurcating world trade system has created new urgency
in trying to keep options on both sides."
For a small country like Hungary — “fragile and threatened”
due to its size, as Orban puts it — the best option may be to not pick
sides, but to wait and see what he can extract from both parties in a
bidding war. This week, he got a White House meeting with Trump ahead of
upcoming European Parliament elections. Not too shabby.
Of course, this Hungary first
policy is at odds with U.S. interests, but who can blame Orban? Even Trump
himself probably appreciates the chutzpah. The Hungarian prime minister
is“probably, like me, a little bit controversial,” Trump told reporters in
the White House on Monday. "But that’s okay.”
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