Trump a ‘wild card’ on China as allies push for tougher policy

Former President Trump and his top foreign policy advisers are putting Chinese President Xi Jinping on notice, threatening to enact a more aggressive U.S. policy toward China as Trump looks increasingly likely to return to the White House. 

There’s bipartisan support in Washington for a tough U.S. approach to China, but Trump’s former top officials, who are likely to serve in a second administration, are advocating for a larger U.S. military buildup in Asia and punishing tariffs on Chinese imports. 

“There is no such thing as an accidental war,” Matt Pottinger, Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, said in a foreign policy speech Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation. 

“Washington’s fixation on unintentional conflict and hotlines may have emboldened Beijing to undertake more aggressive behavior.”

And Pottinger called for increasing America’s $800 billion defense budget — arguing it is a necessity for the U.S. to both assist Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia and deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. 

“It’s gonna be a lot cheaper for us to deter in multiple theaters simultaneously, than to deter really well in one theater, but accept major military defeats in other areas, because it’s the same enemy,” he said.

Trump’s last national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, has called for “deploying the entire Marine Corps to the Pacific,” scaling up missile defenses and fighter jet fleets, and transferring a Naval aircraft carrier from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

Former top administration officials are also advocating a Trump 2.0 economic policy toward China to include 60 percent tariffs on all Chinese goods entering the U.S. and increasing restrictions on technology exports to China. 

Trump has long talked tough on China, even as he occasionally expressed his admiration for Xi’s strength as its leader. 

“China is going to own us if you keep allowing them to do what they’re doing to us as a country. They are killing us as a country, Joe, and you can’t let that happen,” Trump said during the CNN debate last week. “You’re destroying our country.”

There’s ongoing debate over which president Beijing prefers, said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program.

But Biden’s focus on stability and communication with Beijing is likely more attractive than Trump’s unpredictability. 

“I think that for a while the Chinese thought, ‘Oh, Trump’s transactional, we can just make a deal with him.’ I think they’re less confident now that they could do that. And I think they do want more stability,” she said.

Patricia Kim, an expert on Chinese foreign policy and U.S.-China relations with the Brookings Institution, said China faces a “wild card” with Trump and predictably tough policies under Biden. 

“What I’ve heard from Chinese interlocutors, is that with the Biden administration, they are concerned that Biden will continue his policy of tough economic competition with China. They’ve seen how effective it’s been in terms of rallying allies and partners to deal with the challenges that are posed with China and they could expect that to continue,” she said.

“The advisors in the Trump campaign speak in very hardline ways, but also, we don’t know exactly what kind of policies that President Trump might prefer.”

Trump has been less committal than Biden on helping Taiwan fend off potential Chinese military aggression, which China likely appreciates. But a chorus of former senior Trump officials view U.S. support for Taiwan as a priority for American national security and are advocating continued close cooperation with Asian countries on the front line of Chinese aggression. 

Pottinger responded to recent clashes between Chinese sailors and Philippine naval forces — where the Chinese coast guard used axes and knives to attack inflatable Philippine boats — as part of a larger effort to discredit U.S. allies in the Pacific and test the boundaries of America’s response. The U.S. and Philippines have a mutual defense treaty. 

“It’s a dress rehearsal for Taiwan,” Pottinger said. “What they’re doing is trying to demonstrate that they can create a sense of futility and discredit the idea that the United States is going to help, not only the Philippines, but by extension Taiwan.”  

Another priority area for both Biden and Trump is to pressure Beijing to rein in the export of precursor chemicals for fentanyl, the drug fueling the overdose epidemic in the U.S.

Pottinger called Beijing’s alleged subsidizing of Chinese pharmaceutical companies producing these chemicals a “form of chemical warfare against the United States.”

Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and an expert on counternarcotics policies, called Pottinger’s statement “bluster.” 

But she acknowledged that China has relaxed commitments Xi made to Biden following a November summit in Woodside, Calif., to crackdown on fentanyl precursors, and she said flows of those substances appeared to be increasing. 

Still, she described the Biden administration’s diplomacy with China as “adroit” and pointed to remarks from Secretary of State Antony Blinken that, while calling for Beijing to do more, noted there has been “progress.” 

“We have to see over time if it’s sustained and it makes a difference,” Blinken said during an event at Brookings on Monday. 

Felbab-Brown said that China subordinates counternarcotics cooperation to its larger geopolitical goals, but also views it as a key form of leverage with partners. 

In 2019, she noted that China agreed to add all fentanyl-related substances to its list of controlled substances with the expectation that Trump would lift some economic tariffs. He didn’t follow through and then lost the presidential election. 

In 2022, China formally suspended counternarcotics cooperation with the Biden administration as punishment for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) visit to Taiwan in August of that year. 

“Countries with whom it has hostile relations, whom it wants to punish, it denies counternarcotics and law enforcement cooperation,” Felbab-Brown said. “With countries whom it wants to court, or it wants to have friendly relations, it extends law enforcement and counternarcotics cooperation.”

China may view Biden as the “lesser of two evils,” said Glaser, of the German Marshall Fund, but Beijing likely sees benefits in Trump’s antagonism toward allies and partners — particularly in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. 

“The Chinese view Europe as in play, and they want Europe to be separated to some extent from the United States,” she said.

Chinese state media and political commentators lampooned Biden and Trump’s debate to a limit — reportedly holding back on signaling a preference for either candidate, but using the moment to reinforce its narrative of a weak U.S. embroiled in domestic bickering.  

“I think that the Chinese, in terms of their own propaganda, see that the best way to play it is to portray the United States as incapable of putting forward a leader who should be respected by the world,” Glaser said. “And that therefore the rest of the world should prepare to not rely on the United States.”