Reversing the 'reverse Nixon': Trump and the G2 fantasy, Plus multinationals are still doubling down on China -- China Boss News 3.28.25

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What happened?

In a carefully staged performance of diplomacy, Chinese Premier Li Qiang welcomed Trump envoy Senator Steve Daines to Beijing on Sunday.

Daines is the first US lawmaker to visit China since Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Flanked by a cadre of prominent American CEOs—representing Qualcomm, Boeing, Pfizer, FedEx, and Cargill—Daines carried a message from the president: cooperate on fentanyl or brace for a new wave of tariffs.

Beijing’s response was tactful but restrained.

Premier Li repeated well-worn phrases—“win-win cooperation,” “no winners in trade wars”—and signaled a vague openness to further dialogue.

"China always welcomes companies from all over the world, including the United States, to share development opportunities in China, and will actively address their legitimate demands, treat domestic and foreign companies as equals, and continue to foster a sound business environment," Li stated.

But the underlying message was unmistakable: we are willing to talk but not to concede—yet.

Why it matters.

Bluster meets bargain

The Trump administration has strategically positioned the fentanyl crisis as both a domestic imperative and a lever in US-China relations.

It serves dual purposes: a politically resonant issue at home and a plausible pretext for renewed economic pressure abroad.

The result is becoming a familiar Trumpian maneuver: maximalist rhetoric at home and more calibrated overtures behind closed doors.

And herein lies the paradox unsettling Washington’s national security establishment: for all his hawkish posture, Trump may be entertaining a more transactional and pragmatic reset with Beijing.

Unthinkable? Then think again.

According to multiple sources, the president is quietly weighing the contours of a sweeping deal with Xi Jinping—one that would marry economic concessions with diplomatic gestures, potentially including coordinated efforts on fentanyl enforcement, selective trade relief, and even Chinese involvement in brokering aspects of the Ukraine conflict.

This is what The Economist says:

Well-connected officials and scholars in America, China and Europe are thinking hard about “G2” talks and how far they could get. Converging world views make a deal conceivable, for Mr Trump’s might-makes-right outlook resembles Mr Xi’s. Diverging national interests are the obstacle. There is, for instance, a winner-takes-all edge to some important technological contests, from the race to dominate artificial intelligence to competitions over space warfare. That places severe limits on co-operation.

Such a realignment would be audacious—and deeply polarizing.

Any perceived softening on Taiwan, in particular, would provoke fierce resistance from Capitol Hill and deeply unnerve US allies across the Indo-Pacific and Europe.

But for Trump, the logic is clear: it offers the prospect of a singular, theatrical foreign policy triumph—one that he can frame as both historic and uniquely his own.

And that kind of potential pivot is not an aberration—rather, it is a consistent reflection of Trump’s political ethos: a governance style shaped less by ideology than by instinct, grievance, and personal calculus.

The latest example?

Last week, The New York Times reported that Trump had withheld $400 million in federal funds from Columbia University—an apparent act of retaliation for a real estate snub of precisely that amount, $400 million, dating back to the 1990s when the university declined to meet his asking price on a development deal.

Seems the leader of the most powerful nation in the world never forgot. And, decades later, he settled the score.

It’s a revealing parable.

The lesson isn’t just that Trump holds grudges—it’s that he builds policy around them.

His approach to power is intensely personal; his strategic choices are often a function of remembered slights rather than doctrines.

G2 whispers

Which brings us to the quiet reemergence of a long-dormant concept: the G2.

First proposed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the idea of a US-China “Group of Two” imagined a streamlined geopolitical order led by the world’s twin economic giants.

It was a vision of bilateral stewardship—managing trade, climate, and global stability without the friction of multilateral forums.

The proposal withered. Allies opposed it, and strategic realists dismissed it as naïve. Beijing had little interest in playing second fiddle to Washington, they said.

And yet, in the current moment—with Trump once again disrupting diplomatic orthodoxy—the G2 notion appears to be regaining currency, if only implicitly.

Trump is reexamining familiar flashpoints through a new lens. He is questioning the national security premises of TikTok. He is suggesting that Xi could be a useful interlocutor on Ukraine. He is, by all accounts, more open to bilateral compromise than his rhetoric suggests.

The framework is familiar: sideline the alliances, cut out the middlemen, and strike a deal—leader to leader.

It is a model that flatters both his sensibilities and his preferred narrative arc: the singular dealmaker reordering the world stage through force of will.

The reemergence of the G2 concept in Trump’s foreign policy orbit may be more symbolic than strategic—but its implications are no less profound.

It represents a departure from institutional diplomacy and a return to great-power brokerage. It favors optics over architecture, spectacle over structure. And it carries with it all the risks of personalization: inconsistency, opacity, and the sidelining of long-standing commitments.

Is such a deal likely? Perhaps not. But in Trump’s Washington, likelihood has never been the sole barometer of possibility or aim.

Some think that Trump could be motivated into striking the Grand Bargain with Beijing because he recognizes the strategic vulnerability of America’s dependence on Taiwan for semiconductors.

The US leader has positioned domestic chip production as a national security priority, touting major investments by TSMC in US facilities. However, with self-sufficiency still years away, he may be open to unconventional deals — potentially even with China — to ensure continued access to Taiwanese chips while avoiding military conflict.

University of Nottingham professor Maria Ryan last week said that, given his unpredictability and campaign rhetoric, it couldn’t be ruled out “that Trump could seek a deal with China that guarantees US access to imported chips from Taiwan, in return for China absorbing the island peacefully.”

And in a Foreign Affairs piece published yesterday, Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS, suggested the same.

Such a move, of course, would align with his transactional approach to foreign policy and resonate with voters who prioritize economic security over foreign entanglements, even if it challenges Washington’s hardline consensus on China.

All this leads to the more salient question, however, of whether a Trump-Xi summit materializes this summer.

If it does, we may witness the beginnings of a strategic experiment—an improvisational, leader-driven model for global politics that discards the old rules in favor of direct engagement.

It would mark a departure from decades of US foreign policy.

But it would be, in every sense, on President Donald J. Trump’s brand.

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