US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House Republicans at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Thursday (December 5, 2024) that he had selected former Senator David Perdue of Georgia to serve as his ambassador to China, leaning on a former business executive turned politician to serve as the administration’s envoy to America’s most potent economic and military adversary.

In a social media post, Mr. Trump said Mr. Perdue, a former CEO, “brings valuable expertise to help build our relationship with China.” Mr. Perdue lost his Senate seat to Democrat Jon Ossoff four years ago and ran unsuccessfully in a 2022 primary against Georgia Governor Mr. Perdue pushed Mr. Trump’s debunked lies about electoral fraud during his failed bid for Georgia Governor.

During his time in the Senate, Mr. Perdue was labeled “anti-China” in a 2019 Chinese think tank report. The former Georgia lawmaker advocated that the U.S. needed to build a more robust naval force to cope with threats, including from China. Before launching his political career, Mr. Perdue held a string of top executive positions, including at Sara Lee, Reebok and the Dollar General.

Economic tensions will be a big part of the U.S.-China picture for the new administration. Mr. Trump has threatened to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China as soon as he takes office as part of his effort to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs. He said he would impose a 25% tax on all products entering the country from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on goods from China, as one of his first executive orders.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington cautioned earlier this week that there will be losers on all sides if there is a trade war. “China-U.S. economic and trade cooperation is mutually beneficial in nature,” embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu posted on X. “No one will win a trade war or a #tariff war.” He added that China had taken steps in the last year to help stem drug trafficking. The embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening about Mr. Perdue’s nomination.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will go through with the threats or if he is using them as a negotiating tactic. The tariffs, if implemented, could dramatically raise prices for American consumers on everything from gas to automobiles to agricultural products. The U.S. is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent U.S. Census data. Mr. Perdue, if confirmed, will have to negotiate a difficult set of issues that goes beyond trade.

Washington and Beijing have long had deep differences on the support China has given to Russia during its war in Ukraine, human rights issues, technology and Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy that Beijing claims as its own. Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a meeting with outgoing President Joe Biden last month that Beijing stood “ready to work with a new U.S. administration.” However, President Xi also warned that a stable China-U.S. relationship was critical to the two nations and the “future and destiny of humanity.”

“Make the wise choice,” President Xi cautioned during his November meeting with Mr. Biden on the sidelines of an International summit in Peru. “Keep exploring the right way for two major countries to get along well with each other.” President Trump’s relationship with Mr. Xi started well during his first term before becoming strained over disputes about trade and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr. Trump seems particularly focused on using tariffs as a pressure point on Mr. Xi, even threatening he would use tariffs as a cudgel to pressure Beijing to crack down on the production of materials used in making fentanyl in Mexico that is illegally sold in the U.S. A second Trump administration is expected to test U.S.-China relations even more than the Republican’s first term when the U.S. imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion in Chinese products. That brought Beijing to the negotiating table, and in 2020, the two sides signed a trade deal in which China committed to improve intellectual property rights and buy an extra $200 billion of American goods. A couple of years later, a research group showed that China had bought essentially none of its promised goods.

Ahead of Mr. Trump’s return to power, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, have been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year. Mr. Trump also filled out more of his immigration team on Thursday, as he promised mass deportations and border crackdowns. He said he’s nominating former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott to head U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Scott, a career official, was appointed the head of the border agency in January 2020 and enthusiastically embraced then-President Trump’s policies, particularly on building a U.S.-Mexico border wall. He was forced out by the Biden administration.

Mr. Trump also said he’d nominate Mr. Caleb Vitello as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE], the agency that, among other things, arrests migrants in the U.S. illegally. Mr. Vitello is a career ICE official with more than 23 years in the agency and most recently has been the assistant director for the office of firearms and tactical programs.

President-elect Donald Trump named Brandon Judd, the head of the Border Patrol Union, as ambassador to Chile. Mr. Judd has been a longtime supporter of Mr. Trump, appearing with him during his visits to the U.S.-Mexico border. He notably supported a Senate immigration bill championed by Mr. Biden, which Mr. Trump sank partly because he didn’t want to give Democrats an election-year win on the issue.