Is Trump losing the bigger game to China to win a TikTok battle — trade, AI tech and Taiwan?

In ongoing of US-China negotiations, it is becoming increasingly clear that US President Donald Trump has made major concessions on important issues of trade, technology, and Taiwan, in exchange for a symbolic victory on a relatively minor issue of TikTok. Apparently, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has extracted real gains.

Trump on Friday said that he and Xi had approved a deal for the sale of TikTok’s US operations to a US-controlled entity. He pitched it as a “great deal”. The fact that TikTok featured in broader US-China trade negotiations in Spain suggests the centrality that Trump accorded to the issue.

For Xi, however, TikTok was a low-value bargaining chip that he used to extract major concessions from Trump.

Around the same time that Trump was praising the TikTok deal, the news emerged that Trump had cancelled military aid to Taiwan worth over $400 million. His other actions in the Indo-Pacific, ranging from disregarding Aukus to diluting commitment to allies like Japan and South Korea, have also been music to Xi’s ear.

For China, TikTok is an “an expendable concession” and gains in any deal now far outweighs costs, according to Dimitar Gueorguiev, the Director of Chinese Studies at Syracuse University.

“Chinese officials have let the issue fester for years, holding it in reserve as a problem they could one day solve to defuse pressure from Washington. A deal now costs Beijing less than when negotiations started, while still yielding the maximum optics of compromise,” Gueorguiev told The New York Times.

Trump settles with token win, Xi gets real victory

In recent months, Trump has relaxed tech export control rules regarding China, relaxed China’s access to American AI tech, cancelled military aid to China’s rivals, downgraded alliances and partnerships that contain China in the Indo-Pacific, and rolled down tariffs.

In exchange to such massive concessions, Trump has got a minor gain in the form of TikTok deal that fades in comparison to gains that China secured.

China appears to have used its near-monopoly over rare earths’ supply to bring Trump to his knees. While Trump waged the trade war with bravado, ramping up tariffs to 145 per cent, he soon de-escalated as China blocked the supply of rare earths and critical minerals that are needed in almost every item of modern life, ranging from fighter planes, missiles, radars, to cars, smartphones, televisions, and fridges.

Moreover, Trump has also given Trump an optical victory. Weeks after Xi hosted biggest non-Western leaders at the SCO Summit where he pitched China as the new world power that has replaced the United States that’s getting irrelevant by the day, he would meet Trump in a summit in South Korea.

As Trump will go to Xi’s neighbourhood to pay respect to him in exchange for a social media platform’s deal that has negligible value to the Chinese leader, the optics will be clear for the world to see — the President of the United States is making concessions on fundamental positions of his country and flying across the world to pay respects to the Chinese leader in exchange for a handshake deal involving a social media platform. For the world, it will be clear who won.