(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Donald Trump tapped ex-Senator David Perdue as the US ambassador to China, enlisting a former businessman with experience dealing with Communist Party officials for one of his key diplomatic roles.
“He will be instrumental in implementing my strategy to maintain Peace in the region, and a productive working relationship with China’s leaders,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network on Thursday, as he dished out a series of appointments to allies.
The selection of Perdue, who worked in Singapore and Hong Kong helping American firms source cheap labor in Asian countries before pivoting to politics, offers a potential olive branch to Beijing. During the first trade war, he delivered a more conciliatory message to the Communist Party, telling Beijing’s then chief negotiator Liu He that “cooperation is our ultimate goal,” according to an opinion piece Perdue wrote in 2019.
Perdue’s nomination, which needs Senate confirmation, comes after Trump campaigned on a platform of bringing manufacturing jobs back to America, in part, by hitting China with export fees as high as 60%. Last month, the Republican threatened an “additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs” if Beijing fails to stop fentanyl flowing into the US.
“Having lived in Asia on two occasions, I understand the gravity of this responsibility and look forward to implementing President Trump’s strategy to make the world safe again and to represent the United States’ interests in China,” Perdue, 74, wrote on X.
The US ambassador to China will act as a critical bridge between the world’s largest economies, smoothing ties during a fraught period in the looming trade war. Perdue will replace outgoing career diplomat Nicholas Burns, whose predecessor under Trump’s last administration was former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, a longtime friend of President Xi Jinping.
The Communist Party-run Global Times tabloid highlighted that Perdue has “has significant business experience in Asia, including China” in an article on Friday.
“The fact he has emphasized wanting cooperation with China is a good starting point, as is Perdue’s closeness with Trump as it implies a direct line to the President,” said Dylan Loh, assistant professor of politics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “At the very least, it is not nominating a clear China hawk.”
China Bench
Trump has stacked his administration with a number of hardliners on China, nominating Senator Marco Rubio as his Secretary of State and tapping House Representative Mike Waltz as his national security advisor. Waltz in 2021 declared America was already in “a Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party,” while Rubio is set to become the first sitting secretary of state to have been sanctioned by Beijing.
The nomination of Perdue, along with Wall Street veteran Scott Bessent as Treasury chief, suggests Trump is seeking to balance that hawkish faction with some pro-business voices. Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., is another person in the next president’s universe with commercial ties to the Communist Party.
While Perdue praised Trump’s final deal in the first trade war, he said an agreement with China was crucial. “Our relationship could also slip into a period of distrust,” he wrote in 2019. “If that happens, the results could be draconian. If both sides focus only on containing and surpassing each other, then the economies, businesses and citizens of the world would pay the price.”
During Perdue’s first race for the US senate, where he served from 2015 until 2021, earlier comments surfaced detailing his experience leveraging low-cost labor in Asia for American conglomerates — a stance that appears to clash with Trump’s “America First” policy that’s become a flashpoint in the world’s most consequential diplomatic relationship.
“I spent most of my career doing that,” Perdue said according to a deposition document from 2005, in a reference to his outsourcing experience. The Republican touted his achievement building American consumer goods firm Sara Lee’s operations in Asia from the “ground up.”
But as bipartisan consensus has grown for being tough on Beijing, Perdue played down his China experience. He omitted from a 2020 campaign video a photograph of himself and his wife at the Great Wall of China, as well as references to his time in Hong Kong, that appeared in a 2014 ad.
During a Georgia senate runoff election, he criticized his Democratic opponent of having a “China problem.” “His shoddy explanations about his business ties with the communist Chinese government raise more questions than they answer,” he added.
“He appears opportunistic and adaptive, qualities that might serve the development of better relations once Trump’s initial posturing and attempts to build leverage for a new trade deal have matured,” said Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of international relations at Shanghai’s East China Normal University.
On military issues, Perdue has signaled a tougher stance highlighting threats posed by China and Russia when appointed head of the Senate Seapower Subcommittee in 2019. That warning came after he visited Taiwan — the democratically-run island Beijing considers a breakaway province — and promised then President Tsai Ing-wen continued US assistance.
Such expressions of support have irked China, which objects to closer ties between Taiwanese and American lawmakers. Then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in 2022 triggered an unprecedented series of military drills by the Chinese army.
While Perdue’s appointment is not an outright win, his business background has “upside” for China, said Henry Wang Huiyao, founder of the Center for China and Globalization research group in Beijing.
“All business leaders know China is a big market,” Wang added. “He could be a good bridge and a good cross cultural communicator given his business and political experience.”
--With assistance from Nancy Cook, Colum Murphy, Nurin Sofia and Laura Davison.
(Updates with table of Trump’s picks.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.