THE secret meeting in Geneva between the US and China was indeed secret. It had to be. Either it’s secrecy lay in the preparations leading up to the moment, including the contriving of the agenda, or it was in the venue. No matter. The fact of the matter is, the meeting was urgent and unavoidable.

It took a lot of humility from the President Donald Trump administration to squeeze in a meeting with the Chinese delegation in Geneva led by the Vice Premier, He Lifeng. He was in Switzerland for a bilateral meeting. And the American delegation showed up for a brief one. The brevity of the encounter was reflective of secretive diplomatic artistry, and for its agenda and its outcomes, could not enjoy the description as negotiations.

Armed with a memorandum to reduce the ad valorem tax on scheduled items to 10% except for the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which would remain at 20%, the US Treasury Secretary met his counterpart, exchanged pleasantries and signed the Memo.

The memorandum seeks to engage the Chinese in many strategic areas where they could cooperate with the US or maintain channels of trade cooperation with minimum rancour. Realising the importance of a setting that would permit a series of meetings, each at different levels of political mandate, a period of three months was nominated.

The desperation of the Trump administration is not only apparent but understandable as well. If the trip to West Asia represented a massive optics victory, it was dampened by the Palace in the Sky gift from Qatar. To his visible irritation, he constantly has to defend himself or the Department of Defence or both, depending on the discourtesy of the enquirer and the awkwardness of the moment.

The Liberation Day strategy was supposed to have defined a US levelling up to a world that was ripping them off. The scientific mechanism to implement this economic objective was the recalibration calculus, whose science was familiar to neither science nor economics.

The President’s logic sought to prevail on the apparatus of state, and therefore of the world at large that the only way to equalise with a country that has a trade surplus with the US, $263 billion (R4.7 trillion) in the case of China, is to impose tariffs equal to such surplus. And while the shock to such illogicality registered in graduations, each more intense than the other, the Trump administration announced that they would negotiate with each of the countries on his chart who are lining up and begging the US for reprieve from the harshness of the tariffs or sanctions, if you will.

When there were no long queues by world leaders pining for trade negotiations and relief, the embattled Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, announced that all the identified countries would be slapped with 10% tariffs across the board, an embarrassing failure of strategy if nought else.

If the highest tariffs averaged 50%, China was slapped with a whopping 245%. It became apparent that the raison d’être of tariffs was a roundabout way to escalate the China containment strategy.

China did not beg for mercy. It retaliated with its own tariffs by targeting those items that would hurt the US economy the most. President Xi Jinping was not bullied to pick up the phone and call President Trump. And therein lies the rub!

When pressed on why the Chinese did not shiver in terror and humiliation and call for negotiations, the verbosity of the Donald became circumlocutory and evasive.

But one way or the other, he was convinced, he would close the deal with China. And in Geneva, he did not close the type of deal he envisaged. He therefore gave it 90 days.

Yet the President could not wait to get to the next stage of the containment strategy, and so soon thereafter, the US President unleashed a tirade, accusing the Chinese of violating an agreement they are still planning to have.

It comes as no surprise that Scott Bessent went to Geneva with a 90-day validity of any discussion to be had. The Trump administration has a bewildering obsession with 90 days.

If it was not the TikTok imbroglio, it was the USAID suspension of foreign activities or indeed all those policies that got ensnared in the fast-swirling vortex of 69 Executive Orders in 100 days. 90 days seem to define a government when its mind is not made, creating its own 90-day breathing space. The most intriguing question is what happens at the effluxion of the period, when inescapable reality imperatives meet policy indecision. In his inimitable style, the Don has a quixotic retort, no pun intended. “We’ll see what happens”!

90 days notwithstanding, the communique is suspiciously silent about sanctions, especially indirect secondary ones meant for trade with third countries, which the US deeply despises. The relationship between the tariffs negotiations and sanctions is deceptively subtle. Neither the Americans nor the Chinese made reference to them. But they are writ large, however, and tend to dominate the overburdened consciousness of a severely divided world.

There is an added 25% ad valorem tax levied on countries purchasing oil from Venezuela. China happens to be the largest importer of Venezuelan oil. There is an added 100% ad valorem tax slapped on countries purchasing oil from Iran. And here too, China happens to be the largest importer of Iranian oil.

And now the biggest punitive package ever contemplated in the history of tariffs or the US is contained in the Blumenthal-Graham-sponsored bill called the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025. It proposes to impose primary and secondary sanctions against Russia and anyone else buying goods from Russia. It will also impose 500% tariffs on any country that purchases oil and gas, and other refined products from Russia. Predictably, China happens to be the largest purchaser of Russian oil and gas.

Within the context of the China containment strategy, which is a military manoeuvre dressed in trade garb, the trigger moment is likely to be in the South China Sea. China, for its part, is an uncooperative client. They have seen the unfolding of this bellicose script from afar. They have contemplated it with disdain, and in their remonstration, have retaliated with their own tariffs.

What the effect of sanctions on tariffs shall be is a vexatious enquiry notorious for its tautology. Its implications, however, are horrifying to say the least. What would be the utility of tariff reduction to 10% if they have to go back to 1000% because of secondary sanctions imposed against countries doing business with Venezuela, Iran and possibly Russia?

No need to ask. The Don already has the answer… We’ll see what happens!

* Ambassador Bheki Gila is a Barrister-at-Law.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, IOL, or Independent Media.

trade negotiations

Trump and his 90-day panacea