U.S. Emissions Rise 4.2%, China's Fall 2.7%

Is there a future where China uses this as leverage with the rest of the world to put sanctions on the US if we don't transition?

China is doing this for energy independence. Their fossil fuel supply chain is critically vulnerable. They don't care about the climate, but will happily play the optics.

Oversimplification to single causes is sign of poor thinking.

Solar is also economically better for China.

Secondly, I would strongly guess China ramped up production thinking that there would be more overseas demand. It isn't just low demand from the US; for example my "green" New Zealand is also not buying utility scale solar (oversimplified reason from horse's mouth: it is due to our major electricity generators colluding - the actual blocking reasons are more capitalistically complex).

There are very few situations in the world where cause and effect are clear: facile explanations of cause and effect are usually wrong in important ways.