(Bloomberg) — President Xi Jinping’s government is set to welcome a US senator close to Donald Trump, as the world’s largest economies try to move forward trade talks that have stalled at lower levels.
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Montana Senator Steve Daines is set to meet a senior Chinese leader Saturday ahead of an annual gathering of global corporate titans in Beijing that doesn’t normally attract government figures. The Republican will be the first American politician to publicly sit down with a top Communist Party official since Trump returned to office.
Daines announced his trip on social media last week shortly after a meeting with Trump at the Oval Office, saying the president was “pleased that I’ll be carrying his America First agenda.” His visit to Beijing comes as frustrations grow on both sides over US tariffs, with officials talking past each other and failing to agree on the best way to proceed.
“Daines’ trip to China is a way to negotiate behind the scenes,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis. “Trump wants a deal to gain time while he reindustrializes the US. China wants a deal because the impact on exports will be a big shock to the Chinese economy.”
“Markets, particularly in the US, cannot take more tariffs,” she added.
The US president has repeatedly signaled a willingness to meet Xi, saying this week that the Chinese leader will visit Washington in the “not too distant future” — a claim Beijing responded to by saying it had “no information” to share. Communist Party protocol dictates such a sitdown should be preceded by senior talks to sort out the contours of negotiations.
During the last trade war, Daines played interlocutor holding high-level meetings in 2019 with senior Chinese officials in Beijing, including Xi’s then top trade negotiator Liu He, after first speaking with Trump. He’s also a rare US politician with experience of the Asian country, having worked in China and Hong Kong for six years in the 1990s as an executive for Proctor & Gamble Co.
Daines is hoping to this time secure a sitdown with Xi to pave the way for a summit, the Financial Times reported. Such a meeting, while only likely to be confirmed at the last minute, would have precedent: China’s president met with US Senator Chuck Schumer in October 2023 as Beijing and Washington made preparations for a leaders’ meeting the next month in California.
The two-day China Development Forum comes as Chinese officials try to capitalize on momentum in the private sector spurred by artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek, and paint Beijing as a force for global stability. For many attendees such as FedEx Corp.’s Rajesh Subramaniam and AstraZeneca Plc.’s Pascal Soriot, rising tensions could destabilize China’s business environment and dampen demand for their goods and services.
More instability is on the horizon. Communist Party officials will be huddling with Daines and global CEOs days before the US review of Beijing’s compliance with a deal struck during the first trade war is due April 1. One day later, Trump plans to impose sweeping reciprocal duties on partners around the world.
It’s unclear what Beijing could offer to shield its economy, with Chinese officials complaining the US hasn’t outlined detailed steps expected on its role in the illegal fentanyl trade, which Trump cited as the reason for hiking tariffs. Trump’s team rejected that assertion, saying they expected the People’s Daily newspaper to run a front-page article condemning the fentanyl trade and Beijing to hand out the death penalty for smugglers.
In an apparent bid to calm investors’ nerves, China has invited global executives to meet Xi toward the end of the four-day Boao Forum — known as “China’s Davos” — that takes place directly after CDF. That would mark an upgrade from previous CDFs when China’s No. 2 official met executives, although Xi broke precedent last year to meet a group of US businesspeople.
“This is a big PR effort on their part to change the discussion away from the really tough fundamentals that the economy faces, in the face of a huge external shock coming from intensified trade war,” Stephen Roach, a lecturer at Yale University, said of Xi’s meeting with foreign executives.
That Roach is invited to speak at two — albeit closed-door — panels at the CDF and one public event at Boao reflects Beijing’s desire to show openness. The former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman has attended every CDF except the first one in 2000, but said he was “muzzled” last year for the first time after writing critical articles about the future of Hong Kong and the Chinese economy.
China will likely aim to “project an air of relative calm and stability compared to the US” to reassure executives, said Christopher Beddor, deputy China research director at Gavekal Dragonomics. “But there’s a fundamental tension because Beijing appears more inclined to target individual companies than it did during the first US-China trade war,” he added.
Several US firms have already been caught in the crossfire. Chinese authorities summoned Walmart Inc. executives this month over reports it asked suppliers to bear rising costs incurred by increased US tariffs. Beijing placed Calvin Klein owner PVH Corp. and US gene sequencing company Illumina Inc. onto a so-called blacklist of entities as US tariffs took effect.
The foundation for an in-person leaders meeting is still a way off, according to Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It could be that things have to get worse before the two sides are incentivized enough to see that a further escalation would would be deeply damaging to themselves,” he added.
–With assistance from Colum Murphy.
(Updates with table of speakers in conference.)
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