A widespread narrative maintains that Donald Trump’s first administration toughened U.S. policy towards China and posits that his second one will go even further. Understanding why the retrospective component of this assessment is misleading is essential to explaining why the speculative one is dubious. Both discount the extent to which Trump’s conception of the China challenge differs from those of former and prospective advisors.

True, Trump reset bilateral economic ties by imposing a set of tariffs on Chinese exports in 2018. But that decision owed less to targeted hostility than a longstanding fixation on trade deficits and a deep conviction that friends and competitors alike have been exploiting U.S. beneficence. Thus, he also imposed penalties on U.S. allies and partners including Canada, Mexico, and the European Union.

More importantly, Trump did not agree with the fundamental judgment that top advisors rendered in high-profile documents and addresses: that the United States is in a systemic struggle with a country that, proceeding from its leader’s Marxist-Leninist determinism, is compelled to pursue hegemony and subvert the international order in favor of autocratic rule. Instead, he views strategic competition between Washington and Beijing narrowly, principally through the lens of trade, and believes that he can create a more balanced economic relationship by cultivating a close rapport with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

For better or worse, Trump often praised Xi and undercut his own officials’ efforts in order to preserve space for dealmaking with his Chinese counterpart. In May 2018, for example, he extended a lifeline to Chinese telecommunications company ZTE after the Commerce Department had moved to ban it from buying U.S. products, alleging violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea. And in June 2020, he revealed that he had not implemented a Treasury Department plan to sanction Chinese officials and entities involved in administering internment camps in Xinjiang.

In fairness, Trump did allow some of his top advisors to steer U.S. policy towards China in a more confrontational direction — authorizing, for example, a significant increase in the volume of U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan and the number of U.S. naval vessels passing through the Taiwan Strait. But he protected his trade negotiations with Xi, which culminated in what he regards as one of his first administration’s signature achievements: the January 2020 “phase one” deal, whereby China agreed to purchase an additional $200 billion of U.S. goods and services vis-à-vis the 2017 figure by the end of 2021 (China ultimately bought just 58 percent of the U.S. exports that it had committed to purchasing). Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow helped broker the deal, pitting them against advisors who sought to dilute Wall Street’s impact on China policy.

Only with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 did Trump spurn Xi and, a former senior official observes, embrace “a full-bore anti-China policy.” Perhaps believing that Beijing had unleashed a deadly pathogen to sabotage his re-election prospects, he empowered his National Security Council staffers to retaliate and institute as many of the sixteen pages’ worth of China-related measures that they had devised as possible before his showdown that November with the current president, Joe Biden. He even floated “a complete decoupling from China.” But his anger at Xi appears to have abated. At a press conference this August, he said that the two had been “very good friends” before the pandemic and predicted that “we’re going to have a great relationship.”

There is no doubt about [Trump’s] overarching ethos, which he explained when running for the presidency in 2016: “My life has been about winning…I like to close the deal.”

As in his first administration, at least three forces will likely interact to shape China policy in his second one: Trump’s propensity to change tack and even adopt conflicting positions, debates between Trump and his foreign policy advisors, and divides between those advisors on managing Beijing’s competitive challenge.

A few examples underscore Trump’s inconsistency. He has pledged to enact a tariff rate of at least 60 percent on China’s exports (and has announced that he would impose a ten percent penalty on his first day in office), but he suggested this March that he would allow Chinese automakers to build plants in the United States if they were to hire American workers. He intends to extend changes to the tax code that he made during his first administration, a move that would strengthen the U.S. dollar, but he also seeks to weaken the greenback in hopes of revitalizing America’s manufacturing base. He claims that China would not attack Taiwan on his watch because Xi knows that he is “crazy,” but he has also ventured that if Beijing were to attempt an invasion, Washington would be too far away to come to Taipei’s defense. As president, he signed an executive order that targeted the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, but he reversed course this March, contending that banning it would empower “an enemy of the people,” Facebook.

Trump’s broader worldview will, ironically, make him something of an outlier in his own administration. He believes that “European nations were set up to take advantage of the United States” and has called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “obsolete.” Turning eastward, he reportedly privately asked in 2019 whether the United States should exit from its longstanding defense treaty with its most important Asian ally, Japan, and he pressured South Korea to pay 400 percent more in 2020 for the cost of stationing U.S. troops in the country. Beyond his seeming amenability to an international order that revolves around spheres of influence, he evinces little concern for Taiwan’s security, declaring that the island has stolen America’s semiconductor industry and “doesn’t give us anything.” 

Most of his advisors, however, believe that vital U.S. national interests would be jeopardized were China to dominate the fulcrum of the global economy and Taipei be left to fend for itself. The extent to which they will sway him is unclear for a reason that Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former national security advisor, noted this September: “Anyone who says they’re speaking for Donald Trump, whether it’s on personnel or policy, is not speaking for Donald Trump.”

Finally, the advisors who will shape Trump’s China policy are not of one mind. Some, such as his nominee to be Secretary of State, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), see strategic competition as a global struggle that the United States must win, not merely manage: Washington must counter Beijing “in every region of geostrategic importance.” Others, such as Vice President-elect JD Vance, argue that the United States has insufficient resources to contest China everywhere and should pursue a narrower set of objectives: “China should not make our stuff, and we should try to avoid war with China.” And one advisor arguably forms a third camp unto himself: Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest individual and the owner of one of its most influential social media platforms, X, has advocated against decoupling from China, perhaps because the prospects for Tesla, his automotive and clean energy company, hinge in part on its expanding operations there.

The three aforementioned dynamics will militate against a coherent U.S. strategy towards China. In response, Beijing is likely readying at least four lines of effort to capitalize on the interstices.

First, redouble its efforts to boost trade with developing countries and insulate itself from U.S. tariffs and export controls.

Second, work to drive a wedge between Trump and those of his advisors who frame strategic competition as a “new Cold War,” urging him to constrain their freedom of maneuver if he hopes to preserve the possibility of a grand bargain with Xi.

Third, weaken America’s ties with allies and partners by arguing that they can no longer regard Trump’s “America First” mindset as an aberration, but must instead assume that some version of it will periodically shape U.S. foreign policy going forward. Given transatlantic divergences over how quickly and thoroughly to de-risk from China, Chinese officials will aim to persuade their European colleagues that Brussels would benefit by partnering with Beijing to resist U.S. economic pressure.

Fourth, deepen its influence within international institutions such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the World Trade Organization as Washington retreats anew from multilateralism.

Divining the second Trump administration’s China policy is an unusually fraught exercise in conjecture, in no small part due to Trump’s own oscillations. There is no doubt, however, about his overarching ethos, which he explained when running for the presidency in 2016: “My life has been about winning…I like to close the deal.”

China’s growth headwinds and strained relations with advanced industrial democracies mean that it is unlikely to dominate Asia, let alone achieve global preeminence. Trump will nonetheless confront a multifaceted competitor that is likely to endure, whether one considers its military modernization, its technological strides, or its diplomatic footprint across the developing world. No deal will enable Washington to achieve a decisive victory over Beijing. They are fated to coexist.

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