The Xi Miscalculation: How Trump Misread the Most Powerful Chinese Leader Since Mao

If President Donald Trump believed he could bring Xi Jinping to heel with tariffs, he was playing Poker against a man playing Go. What Trump treated as a transactional standoff, Xi approached as a generational contest—a civilizational struggle. He was not Kim Jong-un, angling for sanctions relief. He was not a minor autocrat clinging to relevance. Xi Jinping is the leader of a global superpower, armed with an ancient political philosophy and a modernized authoritarian machine. He never intended to blink.

Xi Jinping: Not Just a President—A System

Xi Jinping rose to power in 2012 as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), assuming the presidency shortly after. Early on, many observers assumed he would be a cautious steward of China’s collective leadership model, established after Mao’s excesses. That illusion didn’t last long.

Within his first term, Xi dismantled rival power bases through an aggressive anti-corruption campaign that removed over 1.5 million party officials—including high-ranking military generals and Politburo members. While packaged as a moral cleansing, the campaign was also a purge. And a message.

In 2018, Xi formalized what had become obvious: he engineered the removal of presidential term limits from China’s constitution, paving the way for indefinite rule. But titles only scratch the surface. Xi also chairs the Central Military Commission, making him the top military official, and he leads the Central Leading Group on Foreign Affairs, the apex body that guides China’s international strategy. This trifecta—Party, Military, State—is the embodiment of the Leninist “democratic centralism” taken to its final form: centralized rule under a single ideological guardian.

This is what Trump surprisingly failed to understand, given his flattery of more dictatorial structures. In America, institutions limit power. In Xi’s China, institutions concentrate it.

The Strategic Logic Behind the Trade War Response

When Trump initiated the trade war in 2018, slapping tariffs on over $360 billion in Chinese imports, the bet was simple: economic pressure would force China to make structural concessions on intellectual property theft, technology transfer mandates, and state subsidies. It would force a recalibration. It would show American dominance.

Xi saw it differently. He understood that the trade war wasn’t just about trade—it was about containment.

Rather than retreat, China responded with a calibrated counterpunch. It imposed retaliatory tariffs on key American exports—especially soybeans, pork, and other goods from swing states that Trump needed to win reelection. At the same time, it ramped up state subsidies to shield domestic firms from U.S. pressure. The Chinese state stepped in where the market couldn’t.

In January 2020, the two countries signed the so-called “Phase One” agreement. China pledged to increase purchases of U.S. goods by $200 billion over two years. In exchange, the U.S. agreed to halt further tariff hikes. But this was not a structural deal. There were no enforceable mechanisms on the core disputes that triggered the war in the first place. And by 2021, China had fulfilled just 57% of its purchase commitments.

To Beijing, this wasn’t capitulation. It was strategic delay.

The Long Game: Rewriting the Global Order

While Washington obsessed over trade deficits, Xi focused on system-building. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—a trillion-dollar infrastructure and finance effort—continued expanding Chinese influence across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Through ports, roads, power plants, and telecom networks, China was building physical and digital infrastructure that would tether emerging economies to Beijing.

At home, the “Made in China 2025” campaign aimed to replace foreign technology with homegrown innovation across ten critical sectors, including semiconductors, AI, aerospace, and biotech. It was an open declaration: China would no longer be the world’s factory. It would be its innovation hub.

Xi also increased China’s diplomatic and economic engagement with Europe, striking trade and investment agreements with Germany, France, and the EU more broadly—filling the vacuum left by a retreating America. Simultaneously, he deepened ties with Russia and Iran, forging energy partnerships that allowed China to hedge against U.S. sanctions and strategic chokepoints.

This was not negotiation from weakness. It was a pivot. Trump mistook China’s interdependence with the West as vulnerability. Xi saw it as leverage.

The Xi Doctrine: Civilization First, Nation Second

Unlike Western leaders who operate on electoral calendars, Xi Jinping operates on historical cycles. His narrative is civilizational: the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” He draws from both Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and Confucian political theory, fusing nationalism with technocratic authoritarianism. He sees the 19th and early 20th centuries—when China was carved up by Western and Japanese imperialism—as a temporary aberration, not the norm.

His vision is for a “multipolar world” where U.S. unipolar dominance ends, and China reclaims its rightful place—not merely as a regional hegemon, but as a global rule-maker.

In that light, Trump’s tariffs were never going to be decisive. They were a tactic, not a strategy. Xi Jinping wasn’t negotiating over corn futures—he was repositioning a superpower.

Conclusion: The Misread That Matters

The Trump administration assumed that China’s economy—so intertwined with the U.S.—would force Xi to compromise. But Xi bet that time was on his side. That he could absorb economic pain longer than American voters could tolerate it. That he could redirect global supply chains faster than the U.S. could rewire its diplomacy. And that he could outlast a single presidential term.

He wasn’t wrong.

Let’s be clear: the United States and China do have fundamentally conflicting interests across many domains—technology, military influence, trade norms, and ideological systems. A firm and strategic U.S. posture is not only necessary but urgent. But firmness is not the same as bluster, and strategy is not the same as improvisation.

This is now the second time Trump has gone head-to-head with Xi Jinping and failed to walk away with what he publicly set out to achieve. In both the 2018–2020 trade war and the current geopolitical standoff, China did not cave. Trump didn’t lose because he was too aggressive—he lost because he misread both his counterpart and the context.

If Trump truly “wrote the book” The Art of the Deal, then he should know that negotiating well requires a deep understanding of the opposing side’s pain points, motivations, and worldview. Xi does not respond to pressure in the same way a real estate lender, Atlantic City developer, or a congressman afraid of being primaried might. He is not only thinking about margins or media cycles—he’s thinking in dynastic terms. His strategic horizon is not the next quarter. It’s the next century.

If Trump—or any future administration—continues to operate on false assumptions about Xi Jinping and the Chinese political consciousness, the U.S. will not secure its long-term national interests. We don’t need to admire China’s system to understand it. But if we fail to understand it, we will keep showing up to the wrong fight, with the wrong tools, against the wrong timeline.

And we will keep losing.