President Trump came into office sounding as if he were eager to deal with President Xi Jinping of China on the range of issues dividing the world’s two biggest superpowers.

特朗普总统刚上任时，言辞间似乎热切希望就一系列导致两个超级大国产生分歧的问题与中国国家主席习近平交涉。

He and his aides signaled that they wanted to resolve trade disputes and lower the temperature on Taiwan, curb fentanyl production and get to a deal on TikTok. Perhaps, over time, they could manage a revived nuclear arms race and competition over artificial intelligence.

他和他的助手们暗示，他们希望解决贸易争端，缓和台湾紧张局势，遏制芬太尼的生产，并就TikTok达成协议。将来也许还能一起将新一轮的核军备竞赛以及人工智能领域的竞争保持在可控范围内。

Today it is hard to imagine any of that happening, at least for a year.

如今，很难想象这些事情中的任何一件会发生，至少在未来一年内不太可能。

Mr. Trump’s decision to stake everything on winning a trade war with China threatens to choke off those negotiations before they even begin. And if they do start up, Mr. Trump may be entering them alone, because he has alienated the allies who in recent years had come to a common approach to countering Chinese power.

特朗普孤注一掷要赢得与中国的贸易战，这一决定有可能在相关谈判尚未开启之前就将其扼杀。而且，即使谈判真的开始，特朗普可能也只能独自应对，因为他已经疏远了那些近年来已就应对中国影响力达成共识的盟友。

In conversations over the past 10 days, several administration officials, insisting that they could not speak on the record, described a White House deeply divided on how to handle Beijing. The trade war erupted before the many factions inside the administration even had time to stake out their positions, much less decide which issues mattered most.

在过去10天的交谈中，几位坚持匿名的政府官员表示，白宫内部在如何应对中国的问题上存在严重分歧。在政府内部众多派别甚至还没来得及表明各自立场，更不用说确定哪些问题最为关键之前，贸易战就爆发了。

The result was strategic incoherence. Some officials have gone on television to declare that Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Beijing were intended to coerce the world’s second-largest economy into a deal. Others insisted that Mr. Trump was trying to create a self-sufficient American economy, no longer dependent on its chief geopolitical competitor, even if that meant decoupling from the $640 billion in two-way trade in goods and services.

结果导致了战略上的混乱。一些官员在电视上宣称，特朗普对中国征收的关税旨在迫使世界第二大经济体达成协议。另一些官员则坚称，特朗普试图打造一个自给自足的美国经济，不再依赖其主要的地缘政治竞争对手，即使这意味着要让美中价值6400亿美元的商品和服务双向贸易脱钩。

上个月，中国天津港的海运集装箱。中国政府对特朗普的每一次关税上调都采取了相应的措施，试图发出这样的信息：中国可以比美国忍受更长时间的痛苦。

“What is the Trump administration’s grand strategy for China?” said Rush Doshi, one of America’s leading China strategists, who is now at the Council of Foreign Relations and Georgetown University. “They don’t have a grand strategy yet. They have a range of disconnected tactics.”

“特朗普政府对中国的大战略是什么？”美国的中国问题权威策略人士之一、现任职于外交关系委员会和乔治敦大学的杜如松(Rush Doshi)说，“目前他们还没有大战略，只有一系列互不关联的战术。”

Mr. Doshi says he holds open the hope that Mr. Trump could reach deals with Japan, South Korea, India, Taiwan and the European Union that would allow them to confront Chinese trade practices together, attract allied investment in U.S. industry and increase security ties.

杜如松说，他仍在希望特朗普能与日本、韩国、印度、台湾和欧盟达成协议，使他们能够共同应对中国的贸易行为，吸引盟友对美国产业进行投资，并加强安全联系。

“If you are up against someone big, you need to get bigger scale — and that’s why we need our allies to be with us,” said Mr. Doshi, who in recent days published an article in Foreign Affairs with Kurt M. Campbell, the former deputy secretary of state, arguing for a new approach. “This is an era in which strategic advantage will once again accrue to those who can operate at scale. China possesses scale, and the United States does not — at least not by itself,” they wrote.

杜如松最近与前副国务卿科特·坎贝尔在《外交事务》杂志上发表了一篇文章，主张采取新的对华策略。“如果你要对抗一个强大的对手，你需要扩大自身规模——这就是为什么我们需要盟友与我们并肩作战，”他们写道。“在这个时代，战略优势将再次向能够实现规模运作的一方倾斜。中国具备规模优势，而美国没有——至少单凭美国自身没有。”

Mr. Trump insisted on Monday that his tariffs were working so well that he might place more of them on China, among other nations. Just 48 hours after he carved out a huge exemption for cellphones, computer equipment and many electronic components — nearly a quarter of all trade with China — he said he might soon announce additional tariffs targeting imported computer chips and pharmaceuticals. “The higher the tariff, the faster they come in,” he said of companies investing in the United States to avoid paying the import tax.

周一，特朗普坚称他的关税政策效果显著，以至于他可能会对包括中国在内的更多国家加征关税。就在他对手机、电脑设备和许多电子元件（几乎占中美贸易总额的四分之一）给予大幅豁免的48小时后，他表示可能很快就会宣布对进口电脑芯片和药品加征额外关税。谈到那些为避免支付进口税而在美国投资的公司时，他说：“关税越高，它们进来得就越快。”

So far, the Chinese response has been one of controlled escalation. Beijing has matched every one of Mr. Trump’s tariff hikes, trying to send the message that it can endure the pain longer than the United States can. And in a move that appeared to experts to have been prepared months ago, China announced that it was suspending exports of a range of critical minerals and magnets used by automakers, semiconductor producers and weapons builders — a reminder to Washington that Beijing has many tools to interrupt supply chains.

到目前为止，中国的回应是一种有节制的逐步升级。北京方面对特朗普的每一次关税上调都进行了对等回应，试图传达这样一个信息：中国比美国更能承受贸易战带来的痛苦。而且，在专家看来，中国似乎数月前就已有所准备，宣布暂停出口一系列汽车制造商、半导体生产商和武器制造商所使用的关键矿物和磁体——这向华盛顿方面表明，北京有很多中断供应链的手段。

二月，美国士兵在芬兰参加军事演习。中国宣布暂停出口美国国防工业广泛使用的稀有矿物。

The result, said R. Nicholas Burns, who left his post in January as the American ambassador to China, is “one of the most serious crises in U.S.-Chinese relations since the resumption of full diplomatic relations in 1979.”

今年1月卸任美国驻华大使的尼古拉斯·伯恩斯表示，这一结果导致了“1979年美中全面恢复外交关系以来，两国关系最严重的危机之一”。

“But Americans should have no sympathy for the Chinese government, which describes itself as the victim in this confrontation,” said Mr. Burns. “They have been the greatest disrupter in the international trade system.” He said the challenge now would be “to restore communications at the highest levels to avoid a decoupling of the two economies.”

“但美国人不应该同情中国政府，中国政府在这场对抗中把自己描述成受害者，”伯恩斯说，“他们才是国际贸易体系中最大的破坏者。”他还说，现在的挑战将是“恢复最高层级的沟通，以避免两个经济体的脱钩”。

So far, neither side wants to be the one to initiate those communications, at least in public, for fear of being perceived as the one that blinked. Mr. Trump often insists he has a “great relationship” with Mr. Xi, but he gave the Chinese leader no direct warning about what was coming — or a pathway to head it off. And Mr. Xi has pointedly avoided joining the ranks of what the White House insists are 75 countries that say they want to strike a deal.

到目前为止，由于担心被视为先示弱的一方，双方都不想主动沟通，至少在公开场合是这样。特朗普经常坚称他与习“关系融洽”，但并没有就即将采取的行动向中国领导人发出直接警告，也没有给出避免冲突的途径。习近平则明显在避免像白宫所称的那75个国家那样表现出达成协议的意向。

There are flickers of back-channel communications: Cui Tiankai, who served as China’s ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2021, was in Washington as the tariffs were rolling out, talking to old contacts and clearly looking for a way to defuse the growing confrontation. Though retired, Mr. Cui is still among the Chinese with deep connections in both capitals — he is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and American officials still use him as a conduit to the Chinese leadership.

有一些通过秘密渠道的沟通迹象：2013年至2021年担任中国驻美国大使的崔天凯在关税措施推出之际正在华盛顿与旧识交谈，显然是在设法缓和日益加剧的对抗。虽然已经退休，毕业于约翰斯·霍普金斯大学高级国际研究学院的崔天凯仍是在两国有深厚人脉的人士之一，美国官员仍然通过他与中国领导层进行沟通。

But recent history suggests that freezes in the U.S.-China relationship can be long-lasting and that relations never quite get back to where they had been before. The August 2022 visit to Taiwan by a congressional delegation led by Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who at the time was still the speaker of the House, led China to send its air and naval forces on military exercises over the “median line” in the Taiwan Strait. Nearly three years later, those exercises have only intensified.

但近期的历史表明，美中关系的冻结可能会持续很长时间，而且很难完全恢复到以前的状态。2022年8月，当时还是众议院议长的加利福尼亚州民主党众议员南希·佩洛西率领国会代表团访问台湾，导致中国派出海空力量在台湾海峡的“中线”举行军事演习。近三年过去了，这些演习强度还在不断增加。

The following winter a high-altitude balloon, which China claimed was a weather balloon and U.S. intelligence officials said was stuffed with intelligence-gathering equipment to geolocate communications transmissions, crossed over the continental United States. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ultimately ordered it shot down off the South Carolina coast.

接下来的那个冬天，一个高空气球飞越美国大陆上空，中国声称这是一个气象气球，美国情报官员则说气球上装满了用于通信传输定位的情报收集设备。拜登总统最终下令在南卡罗来纳州海岸将其击落。

Again, it took months to get past the mutual recriminations and set up a summit meeting between Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden. That encounter resulted in some modest agreements on cracking down on fentanyl precursors, along with a joint statement that A.I. technologies should never be used in nuclear command-and-control systems.

同样，习近平和拜登花了几个月的时间才摆脱相互指责，举行了一次峰会。那次会面的结果是，双方就打击芬太尼前体达成了一些不算很重大的协议，并发表了一份联合声明，称绝不应将人工智能技术用于核指挥与控制系统。

2023 年，一个中国高空气球飞越美国大陆。拜登总统最终下令在南卡罗来纳州海岸将其击落。

But the stakes in those confrontations were not as high as they are in the emerging trade war, which could help push both countries to the brink of recession — and could ultimately spill into the power plays happening each day around Taiwan, in the South China Sea and just offshore of the Philippines.

但这些对抗的风险并不像新出现的贸易战那么大，贸易战可能会将两国推向衰退的边缘——最终可能波及每天在台湾周围、南海和菲律宾近海上演的权力游戏。

Among the questions hanging over the administration now is whether it can put together a coherent approach to China at a moment when key members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle are arguing in public about the right strategy. Elon Musk, who relies on China as a key supplier to his companies Tesla and SpaceX, called Peter Navarro, a top White House trade adviser, a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.” Mr. Navarro shrugged it off during a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying, “I’ve been called worse.”

政府目前面临的问题之一是，在特朗普核心圈子的关键成员就正确的战略公开争论之际，它能否制定出一套连贯的对华策略。埃隆·马斯克将中国作为其公司特斯拉和SpaceX的主要供应商，他称白宫高级贸易顾问彼得·纳瓦罗为“白痴”，“比一袋砖头还笨”。纳瓦罗周日在NBC的《与媒体见面》节目中对此不以为意，回应称“我被骂过更难听的话”。

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back Monday on a Chinese commerce official who dismissed the tariffs as a “joke.”

财政部长斯科特·贝森特周一回击了一名中国商务部官员，该官员称关税是“笑话”。

“These are not a joke,” Mr. Bessent said in Argentina, where he is on a visit. But then he added that the tariffs were so big that “no one thinks they’re sustainable.”

“这不是笑话，”正在阿根廷访问的贝森特说。但他随后说，关税太高了，“没人认为它们是可持续的。”

But whether they are sustainable is a different question than whether Mr. Trump or Mr. Xi can afford, politically, to be the first to back away from them. And then the administration will have to decide what its priorities are when it comes to China. Will the United States declare that it will defend Taiwan? (Mr. Trump clearly has his hesitations, based on his public statements.) Will it seek to find common projects to work on with Beijing?

但关税是否可持续，与特朗普或习近平能否在政治上承受得起先放弃关税的后果，是两个不同的问题。然后，政府将不得不决定在中国问题上的优先事项是什么。美国会宣布保卫台湾吗？（从特朗普的公开声明来看，他显然有些犹豫。）它会寻求与北京在共同项目上合作吗？

It is hardly unusual for an administration to spend months, maybe more than a year, debating how to navigate a relationship as complex as the one with China. President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger spent years plotting out their approach to what was still called “Red China,” resulting in Mr. Nixon’s historic trip to the country and the yearslong diplomatic opening it triggered. President Bill Clinton entered office having campaigned against the “butchers of Beijing,” a reference to the killings in Tiananmen Square and the crackdowns that followed, and he ended his term ushering China into the World Trade Organization. President George W. Bush courted Chinese leaders to join the battle against terrorism.

一个政府花费几个月甚至一年多的时间来讨论如何处理像中美这样复杂的关系，这不是什么稀罕事。尼克松总统和基辛格花了数年时间，制定了他们对这个当时仍被称为“红色中国”的国家的策略，促成了尼克松对中国的历史性访问，并由此开启了多年的外交开放。克林顿总统上任之初曾在竞选活动中反对“北京的屠夫”——指天安门广场的屠杀和随后的镇压，而在任期结束之时，他迎接北京进入世贸组织。小布什总统曾向中国领导人示好，希望他们加入反恐斗争。

Mr. Biden had to get beyond the Covid era before he settled on a strategy of denying Beijing access to critical semiconductors and other technology.

拜登必须先走出新冠疫情时期，才能最终确定不让中国获得关键的半导体和其他技术的战略。

But none was trying to overcome what Mr. Trump faces. He has unleashed an act of economic confrontation so large that it may poison the relationship with a country that is deeply intertwined with the American economy. In the end, Mr. Trump may have to choose between an unhappy marriage or an abrupt divorce.

但没有人需要奋力应对特朗普如今面临的问题。他发起了一场规模如此之大的经济对抗，可能会毒害美国与这个有着紧密经济联系的国家的关系。最终，特朗普可能不得不在不幸福的婚姻和突然离婚之间做出选择。