The big China trade bet is over

For decades, Washington bet that trade and economic integration would push Beijing toward reform.

• President Trump's top trade chief says that bet is all but over — a key insight into how the administration plans to engage with the world's second-largest economy in a new global trade era.

What they're saying: "We've just come to terms with the fact that there is not going to be some giant comprehensive reform of the way the Chinese political system works," U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Tuesday night at the Council on Foreign Relations.

• Greer said that asking China to pivot from an export-driven economy would be like China asking the U.S. to dissolve the Republican Party: "Some of these things we've been asking them for decades are in fact part and parcel of their political system."
• It's a shift from previous administrations, including most recently Biden administration officials who pressed that an economic rebalancing — more domestic consumption, less export-driven growth — was in China's own interest.
• Asked by the Council on Foreign Relations' Michael Froman, who served as President Obama's trade chief, whether the U.S. was done with that approach, Greer said: "I would say, mostly."

The intrigue: Following Trump's visit to China earlier this month, Greer said the administration will request public input on which "non-strategic" Chinese goods should see lower tariffs. It will also ask which American goods China should buy more of.

What to watch: The deadline to renew the North American trade deal —renegotiated and rebranded during Trump's first term — is five weeks away. Greer offered little optimism about Canada's place in the deal.

• U.S. officials head to Mexico this week to begin the first round of talks, without our neighbor to the north at the table.
• "Canada's approach has been different. They, like China, retaliated against the United States. ... They're just in a different spot, and it's hard to see necessarily where that ends," Greer said.

Go deeper: New trade risk: North American trade deal could fall apart