HONG KONG — President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that former Georgia Sen. David Perdue had agreed to be named the next U.S. ambassador to China.
“As a Fortune 500 CEO, who had a 40-year International business career, and served in the U.S. Senate, David brings valuable expertise to help build our relationship with China,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform, noting that Perdue has lived in Singapore and Hong Kong and spent much of his career working in China and elsewhere in Asia.
“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.
The bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies, is often described as the most important in the world. Ties reached their lowest point in decades in recent years, but both President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have been taking steps to improve them despite continuing disputes over trade, technology, human rights and the status of Beijing-claimed Taiwan.
Trump, who takes office in January, started a trade war with China during his first term as president and has vowed to impose tariffs of 60% or more on all Chinese goods imports in his next one. Last week, he said he would impose an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods unless Beijing does more to stop the international flow of precursor chemicals for fentanyl.
Perdue, a 74-year-old former management consultant, was a Republican senator from Georgia from 2015 to 2021. As senator, he served on the Foreign Relations Committee and Armed Services Committee.
He lost to Democrat Jon Ossoff in a runoff after the 2020 general election.
In 2022, he ran for governor of the state after being recruited by Trump to challenge Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who refused to help Trump overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results when the state voted for Biden. Perdue lost to Kemp in the Republican primary by more than 50 points.
“David has been a loyal supporter and friend, and I look forward to working with him in his new role!” Trump said Thursday.
Before entering the Senate, Perdue had a long corporate career including as president and CEO of Reebok and CEO of Dollar General and the North Carolina textile company PillowTex.
The current U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, told NBC News in October that U.S.-China competition would continue “into the next decade.”
“It’s a very challenging relationship,” he said. “But it’s without any question the most consequential relationship that we Americans have with any other country.”
Xi told Biden last month that he would work with the Trump administration and that “China’s goal of a stable, healthy and sustainable China-U.S. relationship remains unchanged.”
