2024 may have been designated as the most recent Chinese “Year of the Dragon,” but the tenor and tone of international events thus far in 2025 suggest otherwise.
In response to President Trump’s April 2 declaration of an American “Liberation Day,” proclaiming a reset of U.S. economic and trade policies along with rejection of the globalist status quo, China dropped its facade of diplomacy and embraced a move to “breathe fire” in the image of its nationally symbolic Dragon.
What has China “seeing red” is America’s intent to boldly pursue its own legitimate economic national interests, and terminate the international indulgence that has empowered the People’s Republic to pull an “end run” around global trade regulations.
Since the Trump administration’s preferred—or at least, publicized—tool of choice was the placement of tariffs on the import of foreign-made products, “Liberation Day” unleashed initial international enmity toward the United States. But the subsequent announcement that America would impose a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs prompted several nations to seek negotiations with Uncle Sam.
Not China…or so the PRC says, denying reports of “back channel” talks.
Beijing began “breathing fire” toward Washington with increasing frequency. Also increasing were the tariffs imposed by the PRC and USA on each other, culminating in mid-April with the American tariff on Chinese imports climbing in some instances up to 245 percent.
Predictably, some in the media have conferred credibility on the Communist Chinese, providing uncritical coverage to a spokesperson from the PRC’s Commerce Ministry, who insisted that the US “has become irrational in instrumentalizing and weaponizing tariffs,” before adding that those American actions are “meaningless.”
Really?
Why then did that same Chinese Ministry just threaten retaliation against any nation willing to isolate the PRC as an element of a new trade agreement with the United States?
That’s exactly what happened on April 21.
Even accounting for the muted language of statecraft, nothing was lost in translation:
“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests.
If this happens, China will never accept it and will resolutely take countermeasures in a reciprocal manner.”
.Here’s why. The PRC is on “pins and needles,” realizing that the U.S. enjoys leverage in this dispute. And one of the prime sources of that leverage is located in China’s “neighborhood.”
Japan began the parade of nations willing to “sit down and reason together” with the
United States. Even though no Japanese-American accord has yet emerged, there is another high-stakes dimension to those unfinished negotiations, also from the realm of international commerce.
In 2023, when Nippon Steel announced its intention to buy U.S. Steel, the news was greeted with American skepticism. Indeed, the proposed transaction provided one of the rare points of agreement in the highly contentious 2024 Presidential campaign, as both Joe Biden (and later, Kamala Harris) concurred with Donald Trump that our nation should “just say ‘No!’”
Now, President Trump has ordered the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to take another, closer look at the proposed transaction to determine if “further action” is warranted.
Part of the reflexive rejection of the sale two years ago was the wounding of “American Pride.” But the preeminence of U.S. Steel in mid-20th Century America and its imagined unbending, unending dominance of that vital economic sector eroded after years of Chinese “steel dumping” in subsequent decades.
So when U.S. Steel portrayed the sale as a “great fit” which would benefit the United States, what many initially regarded as “spin” two years ago is now increasingly characterized as prophetic.
The reappraisal of the Nippon-U.S. Steel deal has led to increasing recognition that the proposed purchase would supplement and strengthen domestic steel production, crucial to both economic and national security. Proponents of the transaction also maintain that the deal would strengthen both companies, bolstering their competitiveness and standing in the global steel markets not to mention bringing billions of dollars of investment in U.S. communities.
Since Communist China committed to a policy of “martial markets” long ago, embracing economic opportunities that would also benefit the PRC’s military and strategic standing, the reassessment of the Nippon-U.S. Steel merger is a most unwelcome development to Beijing.
China’s aggressive response on tariffs may be one major reason the deal could come to fruition, especially as the multiculturalists among us point out that 2025 is the Chinese “Year of the Snake.”
