I started getting emails recently from a new interest group called Americans for Farmers and Families, which publishes information explaining how President Donald Trump’s protectionist trade policies could harm the U.S. economy and kill jobs in agriculture. Members of the wholesome-sounding group, which formed in January, include corporate titans such as Walmart, John Deere and Cargill, along with regional agricultural organizations such as the Missouri Dairy Association and the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association. I’ve received a dozen emails from the group warning about the dangers of Trump’s trade policies in May alone, as hundreds of other journalists undoubtedly have.

This type of pop-up advocacy doesn’t exist in China, where President Xi Jinping’s Communist Party controls nearly all media and there’s little public opposition to government policies. Freedom of expression is a strength of American society, of course. But it’s a tactical weakness for Trump, at the moment, who faces potent opposition to his “America first” policies not just from trading partners, but from powerful players within his own country.

“Xi Jinping doesn’t have the same kind of political constraints Donald Trump faces, with an independent media, civil society, and independently elected national and local officials,” says Scott Kennedy, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. “And currently Xi Jinping is riding high. He’s managed to seize control of the political system and appears to be popular among most of industry and the broader population.”

Trump can only wish for such monolithic support. With Trump threatening tariffs on as much as $150 billion worth of Chinese imports, a high-level Chinese delegation is in Washington this week to try to work out a deal that averts a trade war. At the same time, the US Trade Representative, a Cabinet-level position, is holding public hearings on one set of tariffs Trump has proposed, which is sure to include American farmers, small-business owners and corporate executives explaining how such tariffs—and the prospect of retaliatory tariffs from China—would jack up their costs, cut off key markets and threaten their businesses.

A reversal on ZTE

Opposition to Trump’s tariffs from farmers and businesspeople isn’t new. But it’s intensifying, as trade friction casts a pall over financial markets and an economy that is otherwise robust. And Trump may be showing his vulnerability. He recently hinted that he’ll reverse sanctions on Chinese telecom operator ZTE that his own government imposed just last month, in what seemed at the time a classic example of a tough Trump promise kept.