By Laurie Chen
BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s picks for senior posts in his administration include several people with deep ties to China, but several have divergent views on how to deal with Washington’s biggest rival, including Marco Rubio and Elon Musk.
Trump unexpectedly held off tariffs on China on day one of his presidency even as he said tariffs would make the United States “rich as hell”, leaving the door open for fresh negotiations with the world’s second-largest economy.
Here’s a look at Trump’s incoming cabinet picks and their stance on China.
ELON MUSK
Musk, appointed by Trump to lead an advisory body aimed at creating a more efficient U.S. government, has extensive business interests in China and spent years cultivating close ties with the Chinese leadership as Tesla’s CEO.
Although not a cabinet member, the South Africa-born billionaire could become a key middleman for dialogue between the Trump administration and Beijing, having met recently with China’s Vice Premier Han Zheng in Washington.
Tesla, which opened a Shanghai gigafactory in 2019, has received billions in subsidies, loans and tax breaks from the Chinese government, a rarity for foreign companies normally beset by Chinese regulatory and market access restrictions.
Despite that support, Musk’s other ventures, including commercial rocket and satellite firm SpaceX and social media platform X (banned in China), are viewed by Beijing as security risks.
His mother, Maye Musk, has modelled in advertisements for multiple Chinese brands and is an influencer on Chinese social media, claiming to visit the country “nearly every month”.
DAVID PERDUE
The former Georgia Republican Senator is Trump’s pick to become the next U.S. ambassador to China, and previously lived in Hong Kong during his 40-year career as a business executive.
U.S. Democrats have complained that in his business career, including at sporting goods company Reebok, Perdue relied on outsourcing American manufacturing jobs to Asia, a practice Trump has railed against and vowed to end.
Some Chinese analysts have expressed hope that Perdue’s Asia experience and pragmatic reputation could stabilise fraught U.S-China ties.
Still, while senator during 2015-2021, Perdue criticised China on trade, human rights and defence issues, having accused Beijing of accelerating its military buildup and causing the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. He later supported Trump’s tariffs on over $300 billion of Chinese goods.
HOWARD LUTNICK
Trump’s Commerce Secretary pick is the CEO of Wall Street brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald and an outspoken advocate of tariffs.
However, his firms’ exposure to China has come under sharp scrutiny. One of his firms, BCG Group, has a Chinese joint venture with state-owned China Credit Trust, while Cantor Fitzgerald, with offices in Hong Kong, underwrote Chinese biotech firm Adlai Nortye’s (ANL.O) Nasdaq IPO in 2023.
Lutnick’s financial ties to China raise questions over whether he would be unduly influenced by Beijing while overseeing a broad swathe of U.S. export controls against China, including over sensitive U.S. technologies that Washington fears Beijing could use for military purposes, say critics.
He has said he would step down from his positions at Cantor and BCG if confirmed.
MIKE WALTZ
The incoming National Security Adviser and U.S. Army Special Forces veteran has long been hawkish on China, having pushed for the U.S. to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics over alleged Chinese human rights violations including in Xinjiang.
He vowed earlier this month to continue bolstering U.S. regional security alliances as part of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy, as well as continued U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
But this week, Waltz appeared to show some room for compromise, as he did not rule out continued Chinese ownership of TikTok coupled with “firewalls to make sure that the data is protected here on U.S. soil.”
TikTok resumed its services on Sunday after Trump said he would “save” access for its 170 million American users, despite a law banning the Chinese-owned app’s continued operation over data security concerns.
MARCO RUBIO
One of the most vocal China hawks in the Senate, the newly confirmed Secretary of State was sanctioned twice by Beijing in 2020 over his criticism of China over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang and China’s crackdown in Hong Kong.
It is unclear whether Beijing will lift the sanctions, which ban Rubio from travelling to China, once he is in office.
He co-sponsored the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which effectively bans most imports from Xinjiang. More recently, he described Beijing as the “biggest threat” to American security, warning against China’s dominance of global supply chains.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen; editing by Antoni Slodkowski and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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