China has vowed to deepen its support for Russia after Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Moscow’s trading partners. Xi Jinping, China’s president, said that Beijing and Moscow should “strengthen mutual support on multilateral forums” after meeting Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Beijing.

Trump’s threats of secondary tariffs are “never going to go anywhere” as long as he is unwilling to impose costs on Moscow directly, Keir Giles, a senior fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank, told NBC News Monday.

President Trump’s U-turn on providing weapons to Ukraine is not going down well in Russian state media, CNN’s chief global affairs correspondent Matthew Chance reports from Moscow.

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee accused the Trump administration of “ceding global leadership to China,” citing the trade war and a retreat from international engagement through cuts to foreign aid and media agencies.

The report comes about six months after Trump returned to the White House and began taking drastic measures that his administration says will improve government efficiency and protect U.S. interests, triggering condemnation from Democrats that the moves could amount to ceding global influence to China.

The minority members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee say the White House is undercutting American soft power and letting China fill the void.