When President Trump threatened tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China in January, saying those countries needed to do more to stop the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States, Canadian and Mexican officials raced to Washington, bearing charts and videos detailing their efforts to toughen their borders.
Canada created a “fentanyl czar” and committed fresh resources to combating organized crime, while Mexico dispatched troops to the border and delivered cartel operatives into U.S. custody. As a result, Mr. Trump paused tariffs on America’s North American neighbors for 30 days.
China never made these kinds of overtures and, in Mr. Trump’s view, did not take any big moves to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States. So on Feb. 4, Mr. Trump moved forward with imposing a 10 percent tariff on all Chinese imports. Last week, the president said that on March 4 he would add another 10 percent on top of all existing Chinese tariffs.
Mr. Trump is moving quickly to radically transform the U.S.-China trade relationship. The Chinese are moving much more cautiously and deliberately as they try to assess Mr. Trump and determine what it is he actually wants from China. Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have held calls with their Chinese counterparts. But a call between Mr. Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has failed to materialize.
The Chinese do not want to initiate a conversation because they do not want to be seen as pleading, and are wary of offering concessions before they understand the parameters of the debate, people familiar with the discussions said. Instead, Chinese officials, academics and others close to the government have been holding discreet conversations to try to determine Mr. Trump’s motives, while floating various aspects of a potential trade deal between the countries to assess the Americans’ reaction.
“With my experience with the Chinese, they are suspicious in the initial rounds of a negotiation that there are hidden traps or other reasons to be cautious,” said Michael Pillsbury, a China expert who advises the Trump administration on dealing with the country.
The Chinese side has conveyed they would like to work with the United States on mutually beneficial measures. But they have been struggling to identify people in the United States that they see as reliable channels for communication, according to a person close to the Chinese government.
They are also trying to assess the significance of some recent steps by the administration, like a memorandum that proposed strict limits on investment between the countries. Mr. Trump publicly contradicted that memo days after he signed it, saying he welcomed Chinese investment.
“I think the Chinese are in a wait and listen mode,” said Myron Brilliant, who has spent years working with businesses to understand the Chinese and recently returned from a trip to China. “They’re taking in all kinds of input, they’re beginning their consultations, they’re not pushing the panic button just yet.”
“There is a willingness, an appetite to do a deal with the Trump administration, but China doesn’t want preconditions on that, and seeks more clarity on the parameters of a deal,” said Mr. Brilliant, a senior counselor at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, an advisory firm.
In late February, a delegation including Cui Tiankai, the former Chinese ambassador to the United States, met with representatives of think tanks in Washington, according to more than half a dozen people familiar with the discussions.
Over meetings and dinners, the Chinese delegation conveyed hope that the countries could reach an accommodation, and floated ideas for a potential trade deal, including significant purchases of American agricultural products and Chinese investment in the United States, several people said.
They called for treating China as an equal partner and criticized past measures taken by the Biden administration to “contain” China, like export controls. The delegation also threatened that, if further U.S. tariffs went into effect, China could withdraw a law enforcement package that it had put together to combat the fentanyl trade, which included information that could be used to prosecute Chinese companies, one of the people said. They acknowledged that the Chinese economy was struggling and that more tariffs could hurt it.
Current and former advisers and others familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking say he has expressed interest in striking a wide-ranging deal with Mr. Xi, which could involve Chinese purchases and investment, as well as cooperation on issues like nuclear security.
But Mr. Trump also believes that China reneged on the deal he signed with it in 2020 by not purchasing enough products. Mr. Trump also has no aversion to ramping up the pressure on Beijing by imposing tariffs, seeing them as a source of leverage in negotiations.
Mr. Trump has said he has a great relationship with Mr. Xi and would like the Chinese to invest in the United States. When asked in February if he would do a trade deal with China, Mr. Trump responded, “It’s possible.”
“We did a great trade deal with China,” he said. “The problem is that Biden didn’t push them to adhere to it.”
In a televised interview on Fox on Sunday, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said that instead of stopping the manufacturing of fentanyl, the Chinese were giving “the maximum subsidy” to people making the ingredients.
“The Chinese need to stop this murder of Americans,” he said.
The tariffs that Mr. Trump has threatened to impose on China since coming into office are already roughly comparable to those he imposed during his first administration, said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. In 2018, Mr. Trump put tariffs ranging from 10 to 25 percent on more than $350 billion of Chinese imports, levies that remain in effect.
“It’s still early days,” Mr. Kennedy said. “This should be seen as the floor of what’s imposed, not the ceiling.”
Beijing has so far been cautious in retaliating, answering Mr. Trump’s first volley of tariffs with a more limited number of its own. But it has signaled that it is willing to go further, possibly using its dominance in the global supply chain to exact pain.
The Chinese delegation that included Mr. Cui had come to New York as China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, visited the United Nations. While Mr. Wang did not continue on to Washington, according to one source, the Chinese embassy helped to arrange meetings for Mr. Cui in the nation’s capital.
Senior Communist Party officials including Fang Xinghai, the former deputy chief of China’s markets regulator, and the economist Zhu Min, also traveled to Washington and met with some members of the think tank community and government.
The Chinese appear to be exploring the best points of contact for the their government. In the previous Trump administration, the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, served as an important go-between, as did private sector figures. Recently, the Chinese have been probing the role that Elon Musk — who has extensive business interests in China through Tesla — will play in the Trump administration.
Privately, the Chinese have indicated a willingness to start negotiating a deal but want to know that they have direct access to Mr. Trump.
“There seems to be a sense that Beijing is blaming what has happened on the poor communication channels,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a research group in Washington.
Chinese academics and think tank officials have begun floating various ideas for a trade deal. One proposal is for the Chinese to make major investments in the United States in areas like electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels, which could create an estimated 500,000 U.S. jobs, according to one person with direct knowledge of the proposal. In an unusual move, Chinese companies would be willing to license technology to American partners and hold minority stakes in ventures to mitigate national security concerns, the person said.
Another tentative offer is the purchase of goods and services from the United States in agriculture, aerospace, energy and possibly even technology. The Chinese have also suggested buying more U.S. Treasuries, and honed in on a concern Mr. Trump recently voiced about a move by a handful of nations, including China and Russia to create a new reserve currency, threatening the U.S. dollar. The Chinese have proposed Beijing could stand down on that effort.
Chinese diplomats and academics have indicated that Beijing might also help the United States achieve a deal between Russia and Ukraine and assist in Ukraine’s reconstruction.
In return, the Chinese have suggested that the United States should commit to stabilizing the economic relationship. That could mean refraining from further tariffs and technology controls, and allowing more Chinese investment in the United States.
Given national security concerns in the United States about closer ties with China, it’s not clear that the two sides could find agreement on any of these issues. And some analysts say that Mr. Trump’s moves to ratchet up tariffs are making any conciliation from the Chinese less likely, since Mr. Xi will not want to look as if he’s caving to Mr. Trump.
“We are watching opportunities fly by and the longer you wait, the more hostility there is in the room and less time there is for both sides to come to an agreement,” Ms. Sun said.
Minho Kim contributed reporting.