It happened again.
Just when pundits and diplomats had confidently declared Donald Trump’s signature tactics dead on arrival, the former president dusted off his favorite tool, a.k.a. the “pressure cooker diplomacy”, and gave it another hard twist.
His trademark move?
Crank up the heat until the other side is desperate to talk about off-limits issues they wouldn’t even whisper about weeks earlier.
This time, the target was China.
And once again, it worked.
On May 10–11, in Geneva’s famously neutral (and discreetly well-catered) salons, American and Chinese officials met for the first face-to-face trade talks in over a year.
Officially, the agenda was to “de-escalate” an ugly tariff war.
But for real, Trump’s economic blunderbuss had blasted open a door to subjects that Beijing had long treated as untouchable.
It all started with tariffs that many economists politely called “unsustainable” and less-polite ones called “bonkers.” U.S. duties on Chinese imports ballooned past 145 percent, covering everything from cloud servers to garlic powder, and China retaliated in kind. Roughly $600 billion in annual trade got caught in the crossfire. While markets winced and supply chains seized, Trump stayed cool — if by “cool” we mean escalating like a man auctioning off tariffs at a county fair.
Yet as with every Trump negotiation cycle, the pain eventually worked its magic. While the pain was strong, the solution arrived fast enough. Exactly a month after April 11 (when the U.S. raised the tariffs on China to 145 percent), the parties reached an agreement to significantly reduce tariffs and promised further talks.
When China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng appeared in Geneva, facing U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer, he didn’t just bring well-pressed briefing folders.
He also brought newfound willingness to discuss market access reforms.
Topics that, barely two months ago, Chinese officials would have left the room over.
Now, for the first time ever, Beijing signaled openness to negotiating U.S. entry into financial services, e-commerce and cloud computing – sectorslong ring-fenced from foreign competition.
As Trump crowed shortly after the meeting, Geneva had delivered “a TOTAL RESET!!!” in U.S.–China trade relations. His social media posts (heavy on exclamation marks, light on commas) beamed that “China is OPENING like NEVER BEFORE. Tremendous progress. GREAT JOB TEAM!!!”
And honestly?
The President wasn’t just spinning.
According to China Daily, Beijing agreed to explore American access to these protected sectors “in response to legitimate concerns raised by the U.S. business community”, the diplomatic code for “Trump’s tariff hammer is bad for business, and we’re feeling it.” Behind the scenes, Chinese exporters had been quietly pleading with Beijing’s leadership to “do something” before trade volumes flatlined.
This is vintage Trump.
The same pressure cooker diplomacy technique was apparent in his dealings with Ukraine months earlier, when relentless public browbeating (and thinly veiled threats to military aid) forced President Zelensky to rethink previously non-negotiable security topics.
What critics called bullying; Trump called leverage. The result? Kyiv eventually entertained proposals that had been political suicide to mention before.
The same pattern unfolded in Geneva. Chinese negotiators didn’t just show up to smile and sip tea. They came ready to talk about expanding the menu of negotiable issues, because not talking meant continued economic hemorrhaging.
Sure, the official Chinese line was wrapped in silk.
Commerce Ministry spokespeople insisted the talks rested on “mutual respect, equal consultation and mutual benefit.” But even Xinhua admitted dialogue had become “necessary and urgent” — a diplomatic white flag if there ever was one.
It’s no wonder Trump’s team moved quickly to frame the talks as validation of their approach.
The White House hinted on Saturday that U.S. tariffs could drop to a still-punitive 80 percent — but only if China formally opened up those newly-discussed sectors.
On Monday, May 12, US trade representative Jamieson Greer finally announced that so-called reciprocal tariffs were now at 10 percent each. In real terms, it meant the US is reducing its 145 percent tariff to 30 percent on Chinese goods, as a tariff of around 20 percent had been in effect from previous administrations. China has agreed to reduce its 125 percent retaliatory tariffs to 10 percent on US goods.
Just weeks earlier, that kind of quid pro quo was science fiction.
A seasoned trade analyst captured the mood bluntly, “Trump’s tactic is simple. Raise the price of ‘no’ so high that even a stubborn negotiator starts saying ‘maybe.’ The fact that Beijing’s talking about opening cloud services means they felt the burn.”
Even cautious observers like WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala diplomatically praised the meeting as “a positive and constructive step toward de-escalation”. In plain English: the screaming stopped, and people are finally talking sensibly again.
On the human side, this was no cold spreadsheet exercise.
Chinese manufacturers were desperate to unjam ports and factories.
U.S. farmers and tech firms were tired of losing contracts.
One Geneva observer quipped to Reuters, “It looked like a bad family reunion where no one remembers why they started arguing, but everyone agrees it’s time to pass the mashed potatoes again.”
For all the theatrics, the bottom line is crystal clear.
Trump’s pressure cooker diplomacy delivered leverage where conventional diplomacy had stalled.
His chaotic-looking tactics once again dragged reluctant parties into conversations they previously vowed never to have.
And if history is any guide, Trump is already eyeing where to plug in the next pressure cooker.
