President Joe Biden has largely stuck with his predecessor’s tough economic line against China, and even taken it a bit further. But that’s not how former President Donald Trump is telling it.
Biden arrived in Japan Thursday for a Group of Seven leaders meeting where he’s seeking to bring allies on board with new U.S. plans to limit investment in China – having already won support from key countries for curbs on technology exports. Those policies mark a step beyond the Trump-era tariffs on Chinese imports, which Biden has largely kept in place.
Meanwhile back home, Trump is going on the attack. In a series of speeches and campaign videos, he’s accused Biden of taking a “pro-China” stance, and promised a much sharper rupture between the world’s two biggest economies if he returns to the White House.
China is shaping up as a flashpoint in next year’s presidential election — which could end up as a rematch of the 2020 contest between the two men. And the early skirmishes on the issue come just as the current president is trying to cool tensions with Beijing. Trump’s rhetoric could make that task harder.
It’s objectively not true that Biden is weaker on China than his predecessor was, but administration officials are “very sensitive to the political climate,” says Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s a straitjacket that is certainly limiting their freedom of maneuver.”
‘Total independence’
In reality, Biden’s China policy differs more in style than substance. His administration is keen to keep a united front with American allies — often the subject of Trump’s scorn – to ensure that when the U.S. bans certain semiconductor sales, for example, China can’t just get its supplies elsewhere in the developed world. That requires persuading other G7 countries that Washington isn’t seeking to rope them into a fullblown economic war.
Lately, top U.S. officials have been arguing that their goal is to address specific security concerns, not to sever economic ties. “We are for de-risking and diversifying, not decoupling,” is how National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan put it last month.
Trump, who claims credit for shifting the American political consensus toward a confrontation with China, now says he wants to escalate it faster than Biden has.
“I will gain total independence from China economically,” he told a rally in New Hampshire on April 27. “Biden’s pro-China economic program puts America last, and it’s killing our country,” he said in a February campaign video.
Trump is calling for revoking China’s most-favored-nation trade status, and phasing out all Chinese imports of electronics, steel, pharmaceuticals and other essential goods over four years — with measures to ensure China doesn’t circumvent the restrictions by passing goods through other countries. He’d also stop all U.S. investment in China – not just the targeted curbs that Biden is proposing – and bar companies that outsource to China from getting federal contracts.
‘Talked tough’
Democrats say Trump had four years in the White House to take the kind of actions he’s proposing now — and didn’t do it because he had too cozy of a relationship with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
“Trump has talked tough on China for years, but his record paints a different picture,” says Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “Trump repeatedly caved to China, sold out our farmers, and continued to allow jobs and manufacturing to be shipped overseas.”
Adjusted for inflation, U.S. imports from China peaked roughly halfway through Trump’s term, and have since fallen by some 20% — in part due to the pandemic. Trump says the burden of his tariffs fell on Chinese exporters, but a U.S. International Trade Commission report in March found that American importers and businesses bore almost the full cost.
Still, there’s now a broad consensus around keeping the tariffs. Robert Lighthizer, who was U.S. trade representative under Trump and pushed for an even tougher policy on China than the former president, said he thinks Biden kept them only because smart advisers told him it’s good politics — and that Biden can’t be trusted not to backslide on China if he’s reelected.
“I fear that if the current administration gets another term, that they’re going to go right back, get rid of the tariffs, get rid of the things that Donald Trump did to raise the alarm on China and to level the playing field,” Lighthizer said in a March 3 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington.
‘King of bashing China’
While polls suggest Trump is the frontrunner for the party’s nomination, he’s not the only GOP candidate seeking to make China a signature issue.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who’s widely expected to jump in the race, signed bills into law this month aimed at stopping Chinese purchases of property in the state, banning TikTok on government devices, and limiting university relationships. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy have also been burnishing their credentials as China hawks.
Their efforts make sense, says Republican strategist Scott Reed, because the China question touches on all wings of the party — from evangelical Christians concerned about religious persecution, to economic conservatives angry about the theft of intellectual property, and national security hawks.
“Whoever’s the king of bashing China is going to have a large built-in constituency,” says Reed, “because it is top of everyone’s mind right now.”
And however aggressive Trump’s rhetoric may be, his actual record leaves him vulnerable, according to Derek Scissors, senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
“In his first four years our dependence on China rose in trade, investment, and supplies of essential goods like in health care,” Scissors says. “What did Trump do when he was actually in charge? He signed another trade agreement.”
