President-elect Donald Trump’s first responsibility as president will be to keep the nation safe. No country poses a greater threat to the United States than communist China. Trump’s foreign policy legacy will be determined by how he deals with Beijing.
How can Trump master this most consequential challenge?
To start, he should return to the fundamental principle which guided his policy in his first term: when China pushes, push back harder.
Shortly after entering office, Trump was feted by Chinese Leader Xi Jinping with a red-carpet visit to Beijing. Xi wanted Trump to become so enamored by his personal cultivation that he would tolerate China’s policy aggression against the U.S. To Trump’s credit, the gambit didn’t work.
Frustrated by China’s trade dumping, endemic intellectual property theft, and economic espionage, Trump abandoned the Obama administration’s policy of appeasement. In its place, he moved to hold Beijing accountable for its aggressive ways. The Biden administration, though more tolerant of Chinese aggression than Trump, broadly continued on this path.
Looking to 2025, Trump would do well to focus on four key focus areas.
First, he should ensure that China cannot continue its current strategy of diverting exports into the U.S. via Mexico and other cutout nations. Facing tariffs held over from Trump’s first term, Chinese manufacturers have diversified their supply chains to avoid or otherwise mitigate U.S. tariff duties. Biden has given China too much latitude in these efforts. Trump should correct this error and change that course of action by imposing U.S. tariffs on nations that allow Chinese manufacturers to skirt U.S. tariff rules.
Challenging China’s trade dumping would consolidate allies such as Canada and the European Union, which are currently engaged in their own trade battles with Beijing. With a few exceptions, such as Germany, Spain, and Hungary, the EU is finally confronting China’s electric vehicle dumping. However, China is striking back with its own tariffs and threatening further retaliation. By taking the lead against Xi’s trade malpractice, Trump can secure an early win with allies and quickly seize the strategic initiative in U.S.-China relations.
Second, Trump should strengthen support for Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan. These nations face escalating Chinese military aggression within their exclusive economic zones. China unjustly claims most of the South China Sea and areas under Japanese sovereignty. It is using its Coast Guard to bully its way into controlling these waters. In return for continued U.S. support, Taiwan and Japan must urgently increase defense spending, and the Philippines should restore U.S. military access to Clark Air Base in the country’s north.
Assuming these commitments are made, however, Trump should rush through new arms sales to these countries, including selling the new Typhon mobile missile system to the Philippines. Trump should also order more robust and regular military deployments to contested waters to signal the U.S.’s commitment to its friends and international law. Rather than replicating the Biden administration’s appeasement in deploying occasional worse-than-useless Littoral Combat Ships, assuming these allies step up as noted, Trump should send destroyers and aircraft carriers to circle the waters for a week or so at a time.
Third, Trump should adopt a far more confrontational stance against China’s intellectual property theft, human intelligence collection on U.S. soil, and cyberattacks. According to the FBI, these efforts cost the U.S. economy between $225 billion and $600 billion a year. Tougher U.S. reprisals are merited and needed. The Biden-aborted Trump first-term China Initiative to identify Chinese spies hiding in scientific or academic institutions should be reconstituted. Where Chinese spies engage in hostile activity beyond normal expectations, they should be expelled without delay. Arriving Chinese spies without diplomatic cover should be offered a choice between spying for the U.S. or being turned back at the gate. Rather than the Department of Justice dragging its feet and then bringing criminal charges against Chinese hackers it has no prospect of extraditing, the U.S. should decisively confront Chinese hackers.
More specifically, Trump should authorize the National Security Agency to take a range of reactive actions depending on what harm a Chinese cyberattack causes or intends to cause. This might entail destroying a PLA hacking unit’s servers or bank accounts, for example. It might involve disrupting the ubiquitous social media censors who screen what the Chinese people can see. If Chinese hackers disrupt public utilities or major private institutions, the NSA should retaliate in kind. The key is to impose a new cost calculus on Xi that deters his regime’s more aggressive actions but, if not, at least increases the cost of those actions.
Finally, Trump should make clear to allies that China is the defining security concern for the U.S. The United Kingdom should know that it cannot expect a new trade deal or retain any kind of special relationship if it wants to play economic footsie with Beijing. The same goes for Australia (sadly, New Zealand is likely a lost cause that should be removed from the Five Eyes alliance). Trump should finally wake up to the fact that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a puppet of the enemy, not a partner of the alliance. Germany should kiss goodbye to U.S. military bases unless it increases defense spending and judges Chinese threats more skeptically. However, allies that stand with the U.S. on China should receive preferential trade deals and greater U.S. diplomatic support for their concerns.
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China poses the most significant challenge to long-term U.S. security and prosperity, and that of its allies (even if some of them haven’t yet figured it out), since Imperial Japan in late 1941. Trump must seize the initiative.
If he does, on this matter at least, the history books will remember him fondly.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
