Decoding China's New Trade Strategy

Everybody needs to know what Beijing is doing

Jun 10, 2025

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As the US and China meet for a second day in London to discuss trade friction and solutions, the Chinese are operating with a different playbook and outlook than in the past. This is no longer a “simple” discussion about tariffs, non-tariff barriers, state subsidies, or China’s domination of key trade pillars, like global shipping, all of which rattle the US.

Read my latest opinion piece in fDi Intelligence, a magazine from the Financial Times, on how the world is rebuffing Trump’s geopolitics.

From China’s vantage point, there is far more at stake. The trade talks have become a new means for China to advance its geopolitical interests on the world stage. The alarm bells over rare earth elements (REEs) are a notable example, as China, which produced 69% of REEs last year and processed 90% of them, is starting to weaponize the resource to achieve specific goals, far greater than pressuring the US to make a deal.

Decoding China’s new trade strategy, then, enables stakeholders to manage the spreading economic uncertainty and preempt the geopolitics that is coming.