The first month of Donald Trump’s second presidency has brought a bewildering number of new initiatives in both foreign and domestic policy. Yet measures related to China, the U.S.’s main strategic rival, have been relatively thin.

To be sure, Trump has already raised tariffs on Chinese imports by 10 percent and charged Secretary of State Marco Rubio with reducing Chinese influence at the Panama Canal. Last Friday, he signed a memo directing the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to limit Chinese investment in several U.S. sectors, including technology, agriculture, and critical minerals. Trump also said the administration will consider expanding its screening of outbound investment to China in “sensitive technologies.”

But the tariff hike leaves the overall levy on Chinese goods well below the 60 percent Trump floated on the campaign trail, during which time he often expressed his “respect” for Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The new administration has also paused the ban on Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, and even invited its chief executive to Trump’s inauguration, where he sat next to Tulsi Gabbard, now the director of national intelligence. Last week, the New York Times reported that Trump is eying a new deal with China that would encompass trade and investment but could include areas such as nuclear security too. 

Harvard professor Graham Allison, whose 2017 book Destined for War warned the U.S. and China are set for inevitable conflict, has even predicted a Trump-led improvement of relations between Washington and Beijing.

Such a change would upend years of growing bipartisan hostility towards China that accelerated during Trump’s first term, and raise questions as to whether the country is becoming less of a political boogeyman. To date, though, China hawks have mostly kept their doubts private.

The returning president is making the Republican foreign policy establishment “very nervous about where we’re going on China,” says Dennis Wilder, a China specialist on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration.

Especially in Congress, all of the narratives about CCP influence remain salient. All of the irritants that seem pacified for now could easily rear up again if President Trump or his key advisors see value in using them for leverage in trade negotiations.

Rorry Daniels, managing director of the Asia Society Policy Institute, a think tank

Business and financial ties between some key figures close to Trump and China are exacerbating those nerves. Elon Musk, of course, has made extensive investments in the world’s second-largest economy via electric vehicle maker Tesla, whose China supply chain has contained companies sanctioned by the United States. Kash Patel, Trump’s new FBI director, recently disclosed he earned up to $5 million worth of stock doing consulting work for the parent company of China-founded fast fashion giant Shein. 

Some of Trump’s appointees don’t fully sign up to bipartisan criticisms of China, too: Acting Undersecretary of State Darren Beattie, for example, has made comments on X that appear to support Beijing’s suppression of the country’s Uyghur minority. Michael Anton, the director of policy planning at the State Department wrote an essay in 2021 called “Why It’s Clearly Not In America’s Interest To Go To War Over Taiwan.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Intentionally or not, some of the Trump administration’s initial moves could benefit Beijing. As The Wire reported earlier this month, the freeze on funding to the National Endowment for Democracy threatens the existence of groups that carry out research on China to which the Chinese government often objects. China, whose territorial ambitions stretch to Taiwan and the South China Sea, is also watching closely as the U.S. wavers on support for Ukraine. 

In her first memo after taking office, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI’s foreign influence task force, which the agency’s former director Christopher Wray created in 2017 over concerns about Russian interference in U.S. elections. It soon grew to focus on China as well.

“To the extent that we were trying to best understand and prevent China’s illicit national security goals, the foreign influence task force was a great thing,” says Peter Strzok, a former FBI counterintelligence officer who was fired in 2018 for criticizing Trump. “Getting rid of it hurts the FBI’s ability to counter the clandestine efforts of the PRC.”

The FBI declined to comment.

In spite of these moves, the administration and Congress are still packed with China hawks. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), the number three Republican in the Senate, told The Wire last week that “China is waging an economic world war against us.” But over the past month, most of the hawks have been relatively quiet, even if some observers pour cold water on the idea that a fundamental shift is taking place. 

“There is no vibe shift in DC on China,” says Melanie Hart, a State Department official during the Biden administration who now works at the Atlantic Council. Others warn it is far too early to expect a Nixon-style change in U.S. policy toward Beijing, or a China-sized rupture in the Republican party. 

Still, if Trump does pursue some kind of grand bargain with China, it could awaken those who are hostile towards the U.S.’s rival.

“What will be a problem for the president, is if he creates this deal, the hawks around him will be looking immediately to say, ‘China’s not living up to it,’” Wilder says. “Just getting the deal isn’t going to solve the inherent contradiction between Trump and many of the people around him on China and Taiwan policy.”

Even the prospect of a negotiation could prove too much for certain hawks in Congress. Cotton told The Wire that China “is not a country that has splittable differences or understandable grievances.”

“Especially in Congress, all of the narratives about CCP influence remain salient. All of the irritants that seem pacified for now could easily rear up again if President Trump or his key advisors see value in using them for leverage in trade negotiations,” says Rorry Daniels, managing director of the Asia Society Policy Institute, a think tank. “The hawks may be latent, but they’ve hardly disappeared, so over time China might rise up on the list of threats to Trump’s agenda.”

Beyond Washington, some detect shifting attitudes towards China among young people, many of whom flocked to Xiaohongshu as a substitute when the TikTok ban appeared imminent. Interacting with regular Chinese people there showed a more positive side of China to many Americans who grew up hearing only negative stories about the country, says Kaiser Kuo, the host of the Sinica podcast.

What will be a problem for the president, is if he creates this deal, the hawks around him will be looking immediately to say, ‘China’s not living up to it.’ Just getting the deal isn’t going to solve the inherent contradiction between Trump and many of the people around him…

Dennis Wilder, a China specialist on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration

“It was this collective feeling among so many young people that they had been gaslit on China,” he says. “Suddenly they are seeing a China with their own eyes that just simply does not jive with what they have been led to believe.” 

Kuo is not yet ready to bet on a durable change in American attitudes, however. More than eight in ten Americans had an unfavorable view of China in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center; as of last year, Republicans were almost 50 percent more likely than Democrats to view the country as a threat, according to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

“I don’t think I would put money at this point on the vibe shift being durable,” Kuo says. “But I’m not ready to say it’s not either.”

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