Many observers argue that the first Trump administration played an important role in consolidating a bipartisan U.S. “consensus” on China, the core element of which is a judgment that Beijing is Washington’s foremost strategic competitor. Documents such as the 2017 national security strategy and speeches by prominent officials—most notably one by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in July 2020—argued that erstwhile China policy had failed, framed China in explicitly adversarial terms, and depicted Chinese President Xi Jinping as a Marxist-Leninist autocrat with pretensions to global hegemony.
Ironically, though, the most prominent dissenter from this putative understanding may well be the individual whom one might expect to be its strongest exponent: the past and current U.S. president, Donald Trump. President Trump does not dispute that China is the world’s second most powerful country, and he has long accused it of free riding off of U.S. largesse. Unlike some of his advisors, however, who regard strategic competition between the United States and China as an existential struggle, he takes a narrower view, with few evident grievances beyond the latter’s trade surplus and export of fentanyl precursors.
One hypothesis for this discrepancy is Trump’s affinity for Xi, whom the former seems to regard less as an avatar of adversarial ambition than as the head of an impressive company. If he harbors any residual anger at Xi over the coronavirus pandemic—Trump believes that Xi could have prevented it from spreading beyond China’s borders—that sentiment does not seem to be animating his present rhetoric. He stated in September that Xi had been a “dear friend” of his during his first term and declared in December that the United States and China could “together solve all of the problems of the world.” With his highly personalistic approach to diplomacy, Trump believes that he can reset the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship by rebuilding his rapport with Xi.
His vision of U.S.-China relations has echoes of the “informal G2” proposal that Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, popularized in early 2009. Brzezinski rightly argued that there should be a regular cadence of engagement between “the two countries with the most extraordinary potential for shaping our collective future.” That judgment is even more self-evident today. First and foremost, Washington and Beijing must spare no effort to avoid a war that, even were it to stay below the nuclear threshold, would exact an enormous human toll and plunge the global economy into depression. Second, they should undertake to strengthen cooperation on transnational challenges that will indefinitely entangle the two countries’ economies and societies.
Still, as Trump prepares for a potential summit with Xi before the end of this year, he should be mindful of three potential pitfalls that could undercut America’s strategic competitiveness and even undermine global security in the process.
First, Xi is likely to treat Trump’s overtures with caution, if not suspicion. He knows that an exogenous shock to the international order could quickly bring Trump into alignment with advisors who seek to challenge China more forcefully, as the pandemic did in 2020. With Trump restoring direct dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin and advocating for Russia’s readmission into the G7, Xi is mindful of speculation, however dubious, that Trump may want to loosen Moscow’s embrace of Beijing. Perhaps most importantly, Xi has concluded that the United States is determined to stymie China’s economic development no matter who occupies the White House. Indeed, Trump is presently ratcheting up actual and threatened tariffs against China, declaring that he will not make a trade deal unless China eliminates its surplus with the United States. As such, Xi is unlikely to conclude that the next four years will yield a fundamental reset of U.S. policy towards China.
Second, despite its mounting growth headwinds, China is a far more formidable economic, military, and diplomatic competitor than it was eight years ago, partly because the tariffs that Trump imposed in his first administration compelled it to accelerate its quest for greater technological self-reliance and expand its partnerships—especially in the developing world. Thus, Xi will likely drive a harder bargain before committing to pursue a bilateral economic relationship that Trump would deem fair. He would likely be most interested in what concessions Trump might be prepared to make—especially on Taiwan, one of China’s “four red lines” in its readout of the final meeting between Xi and then-President Joe Biden last November.
Trump claimed in October that China will refrain from military action against Taiwan because Xi knows that he is “crazy.” On balance, however, his statements evince little concern for the island’s security. He ventured in 2019 that if Beijing were to attempt an invasion, Washington would be too far away to come to Taipei’s defense. Last July, he declared that Taiwan has stolen the U.S. semiconductor industry and “doesn’t give us anything.” Most recently, following an announcement in March by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the company that produces roughly 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chips, that it would increase its investment in the United States by $100 billion, Trump remarked that while a Chinese invasion would be “a catastrophic event,” TSMC’s infusion would “at least give us a position where […] in this very, very important business, we would have a very big part of it in the United States, so it would have a big impact if something should happen with Taiwan.”
Were Xi to conclude, correctly or incorrectly, that Trump would be prepared to sacrifice Taiwan’s security to secure a trade deal, he might perceive a window of opportunity either to achieve the mainland’s reunification with the island by force or make significantly more progress than he had anticipated towards implementing what Jude Blanchette and Bonnie Glaser characterize as China’s present “strangulation” campaign against Taiwan. China continues to conduct large-scale military exercises off of the island’s coast amid growing concern that Beijing may be preparing to blockade Taipei.
The third reason why Trump’s attempted reset of U.S.-China relations might boomerang is that his “America First” worldview is alienating U.S. allies and partners anew, especially in Europe. Yan Xuetong, one of China’s leading international relations scholars, contends that “the core of competition between China and the United States will be to see who has more high-quality friends.” The more that America’s friends feel that they need to hedge their bets by strengthening their ties with Beijing, even de-risking from Washington, the less leverage Trump will have in his dealings with Xi, who is determined to demonstrate that China is broadening its diplomatic ambit while the United States is shrinking its own.
Just over two months into office, Trump has insisted that Canada should be subsumed into the United States as its 51st state and enforced a 25 percent tariff on all steel and aluminum imports. He has launched a “Liberation Day” campaign of reciprocal tariffs that threatens to upend the international economic order, affecting some of America’s closest allies and partners. He has pledged to seize control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, promising that the United States will expand its territory as part of a new “manifest destiny.” And he is attempting to negotiate a settlement of the Russia-Ukraine war without Europe’s involvement, while accusing Ukraine of starting the conflict. It is telling, and troubling, that some European officials now regard the United States not merely as an unreliable partner, but potentially as a new adversary.
While unilateral applications of U.S. power can produce short-term results, they risk eroding U.S. influence over time by accelerating existing efforts and stimulating additional ones by countries—partners and competitors alike—to circumvent U.S. pressure and form new relationships. Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asked business leaders to help him reduce Ottawa’s economic dependence on Washington. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said that in “an era of hyper-competitive and hyper-transactional geopolitics,” the European Union has “room to engage constructively with China—and find solutions in our mutual interest.” In a phone call this month with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, she stated that Europe and China must “support a strong reformed trading system” in view of “the widespread disruption caused by the U.S. tariffs.” Incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has declared that his “absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that […] we can really achieve independence from the USA”—a judgment that would have seemed unthinkable at the beginning of this year. And after February’s clash between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, proclaimed that “the free world needs a new leader.”
While such sentiments may not be as pronounced or widespread in Asia, they are percolating. India and Japan continue to strengthen their ties with the United States, but they are also taking steps to thaw ties with China. In May, Malaysia, this year’s chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), will hold the first joint summit between China, the member countries of ASEAN, and the member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim explaining that cultivating ties with “emerging economies” is essential to “ensuring ASEAN’s strategic relevance in a multipolar world.” Perhaps most striking is the language coming from Singapore, which expends great effort to preserve equally robust ties with the United States and China; Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said in February that the former’s image in Asia “has changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent.”
U.S. allies and partners want the United States and China to manage their rivalry responsibly, especially amid a growing risk of armed conflict in Asia. In addition, many of them have concerns over the latter’s actions and ambitions, as seen with the hardening disposition of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization towards Beijing, the sustained momentum of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and the proliferation of arrangements such as AUKUS. But they increasingly bristle at the perception that Washington views them as instruments of strategic competition rather than partners for affirmative purposes. Trump’s actions since being re-elected enable China to amplify their anxieties over U.S. reliability.
Sustained high-level engagement between the world’s two foremost powers is vital. But Trump’s seeming indifference to Taiwan’s security and escalating attacks on U.S. allies and partners will undercut his bargaining power when he sits down with Xi.