The Battle to Shape Trump's China Policy

A Taxonomy of Future Trump Appointees

We’ve got a guest column by the great

T. Greer

. His personal blog is The Scholar’s Stage and he also runs the excellent Center for Strategic Translation. This article was originally published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute on October 29, 2024.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal editorial board asked Donald Trump why China would not invade Taiwan on his watch. Trump told the Journal that the Chinese would not dare to invade. As Trump put it: “[Xi Jinping] knows that I am f—ing crazy.”

One must pity the Chinese analyst asked to predict what a second Trump administration will mean for U.S.-Chinese relations. Like Richard Nixon before him, Trump is ready to play the lunatic; he clearly believes that the less predictable he is to the Chinese, the better off America will be. Though China occupies a central place in Trump’s campaign rhetoric, his campaign has not published or endorsed any detailed China policy proposals. The actions of the last Trump administration do not provide a better guide. Divided by infighting, its China policy was not consistent. At times, Trump’s foreign policy swung wildly as specific individuals rose or fell from his favor. Things do not get much easier if one looks at the views of the politicians and policy wonks that Trump would call on in a second administration. Their views are varied. Among Trump’s closest allies, we find fundamental disagreements on the proper ends and proper means of American strategy toward China.

Given these hurdles. I will not try to predict the path a second Trump administration might tread. It seems more useful to lay out a few observations on the different schools of thought now contending for leadership of that policy. My observations are shaped by the dozens of interviews I have conducted over the last two months with Republican staffers, think tankers, and former officials. A longer and more thorough report of my findings will be published by FPRI later this year. This is a pre-election preview.

The questions that divided Republicans in 2017 are not the questions that will divide them in 2025. Trump’s election shattered a policy consensus shared by the leaders of both parties for the better part of four decades. Many of the architects of this consensus were still influential during Trump’s first years in office. On the other hand, many who rejected “engagement” with China had spent years exiled from power. Others were completely new to service in the executive branch. This was a diverse group who did not all reject engagement for the same reasons. These differences were not initially apparent, as their objections were too marginal to the pre-Trump policy debates for much scrutiny to be given to them. Nor was it immediately apparent to these officials where the new bounds of public opinion or presidential approval lay. Thrust into power quite suddenly, they were forced to improvise as they went—and improvise again as the Chinese reaction to Trump’s trade war changed the context in which they worked. All of these factors gave China policy under Trump 1.0 an unusually chaotic flavor.

None of these conditions hold this election season. The architects of engagement are no longer relevant. A tough line on China is now taken as a starting point for all factions involved. Over the last eight years, a new ecosystem of conservative think tanks, policy journals, and Congressional offices has sprouted up to provide Trumpism with the intellectual coherence it lacked in 2017. Policy proposals are now numerous and detailed. Out of power, former Trump officials have had the time to carefully lay out their vision for American strategy in Asia. They have done this in speeches, policy reports, and full-length books. Disagreements between their different schools of thought are formally debated on both panels and podcasts.

Points of Consensus and Conflict in Trump World

Amid these debates, one finds several points of consensus. The disputing intellectuals, wonks, and politicians all agree that China is the most significant foreign policy problem the United States now faces. They describe China as a challenge that must be met in many dimensions: military, economic, and technological (some would add “ideological” to this list, but that is a point of debate, not consensus). Republicans agree that the U.S. armed forces are poorly structured and lack the resources needed to counter the military challenge posed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). They agree that America’s commercial and financial relationship with China underwrote the rise of a powerful rival while undermining America’s own industrial base. They believe that China has taken advantage of the traditional American commitment to globalization and free markets, and that doubling down on this commitment is foolish. To level the playing field, some mix of tariffs, export controls, capital controls, and industrial policy is necessary. They agree that the Biden administration’s China policy—while an improvement on that of the Obama administration—has nonetheless been feckless. They believe that the Biden administration articulates geopolitical goals that it has not resourced, cares too much about perceptions of amity, cares too little about perceptions of strength, and has not sold the American people on its foreign policy priorities.   

But behind this consensus lie many fundamental disagreements.

The debates about China policy can be largely sifted into two buckets: economics and geopolitics. It is common for individuals to be closely allied in the economic sphere but not in the geopolitical sphere, or vice versa. For example, senators Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance are close allies on the economic front; there are few meaningful distinctions between the economic strategy each endorses. Their respective takes on the geopolitical problem posed by China are much harder to reconcile. 

In theory, one’s position on the CHIPS Act or tariff rates might influence one’s position on military commitments to Taiwan or military aid to Ukraine. In practice, this is rarely so. The economic and geopolitical debates occur on different planes.

One way to represent the core principles at play in the geopolitical debate is with a classic two-by-two matrix (popularized on the internet as a “political compass”).

Optimism vs. Pessimism

 On the x axis I place the single most important difference between the various schools of thought: assessments of American power and state capacity. Where one falls in many of the most prominent debates—such as “Can the United States can afford to support both Ukraine and Taiwan?” or “Should the ultimate goal of our China policy be victory over the Communist Party of China, or should it be détente?”—has less to do with one’s assessment of China and more to do with one’s assessment of the United States. What resources can we muster for competition with China? Just how large are our stores of money, talent, and political will?

Those on the right quadrants of my diagram provide pessimistic answers to these questions. They buttress their case with measurables: steel produced, ships at sea, interest paid on the federal deficit, or the percentage of an ally’s gross domestic product spent on defense. Against these numbers are placed fearsome statistics of Chinese industrial capacity and PLA power. Changes in technology, which favor shore-based precision munitions at the expense of more costly planes and ships, further erode the American position. This is a new and uncomfortable circumstance. The last time the United States waged war without overwhelming material superiority was in 1812.

To those who see American power through this frame, there is only one logical response: the United States must limit its ambitions. This means either radically reprioritizing defense commitments to focus on China or retreating from conflict with China altogether.

Those on the left two quadrants see things differently. Where the pessimists see settled facts, the optimists see possibilities. The optimists recognize many of the same trends as the pessimists, but view them as self-inflicted mistakes that can, and should, be reversed. An inadequate defense budget is not a law of the universe but a political choice. If Trump wins, he will choose otherwise. Implicit in the optimist view is a longer time horizon—there is still time to turn things around. But this window will not be open forever. Optimists fear that pessimistic assessments erode the political will needed to make changes while change is still possible.

The arguments between pessimists and optimists could be reframed as a matter of risk. The pessimists are most worried about the downside risks of a crisis with China in the near future (c. 2025–28). The optimists balance that possibility against the longer-term risks America will face as it withdraws from other regions of the world or abandons defense capabilities that are not needed in the Pacific theater. Optimists believe this second class of risks is large, and that the United States should not court them. Even an America in desperate need of defense reform has some capacity to “walk and chew gum at the same time.” This issue is at the crux of their arguments on Ukraine: in material terms, aid to Ukraine is not coming at Taiwan’s expense. It is relatively cheap. What stops America from helping both beleaguered nations?

 The pessimists do not view that question purely in material terms. In their debates, the pessimists are quick to highlight the few weapons systems being shipped across the Atlantic that might be used in the Pacific, but their critique reaches higher than this. The costs of the war in Ukraine (and the Middle East) are measured not just in bullets, but in attention and effort: There are only so many minutes the National Security Council may meet. Washington can only have a few items on its agenda at any given time. The executive branch is stodgy, slow, and captive to bureaucratic interests; the legislative branch is rancorous, partisan, and captive to public opinion; the American public does not care a whit about the world abroad. Accomplishing anything meaningful in the United States—much less the drastic defense reforms both sides of the debate agree are necessary—requires singular attention and will. 

If this seems like a pessimistic take on the American system—well, it is one. It is common for people in the optimistic quadrants to argue that the People’s Republic of China is riddled with internal contradictions. In a long-term competition between the two systems, they are confident that these contradictions will eat China from the inside out, and that America’s free and democratic order will eventually emerge victorious. None of the pessimists I interview make similar predictions. If they have anything to say about internal contradictions, it is American contradictions they focus on.  

Power-Based vs. Values-Based Perspectives

So much for the optimist-pessimist divide. What of the y axis?

I think of this as a pole, with “power-based” perspectives on one hand and “values-based” perspectives on the other.

Republicans in the top two quadrants ground their arguments in cold calculations of realpolitik. From this perspective, international politics is first and foremost a competition for power. States seek power. The prosperity, freedom, and happiness of any nation depend on how much power its government can wield on the world stage. While states might compete for power in many domains, military power is the most important. A state frustrated by a trade war might escalate to a real war, but a state locked in deadly combat has no outside recourse. The buck stops with the bullet.

From the power-based perspective, then, the goal of American strategy must be the maximization of American power, with military force as the ultimate arbiter of that power. This force does not need to be realized in combat—ideally, its deterrent power will be strong enough that it is never actively used. The ideal means of American strategy is a military posture and alliance system strong enough to deter the Chinese from resorting to war.

The left and right quadrants of this perspective disagree on the best way to build that sort of power. The upper right quadrant—the prioritizers—do not believe America will ever possess power sufficient to compel China into submission; a stable détente between the two countries is the best outcome that America can attain. Even this modest aim will only be possible if the United States prioritizes the threat posed by China above all others.

Those who argue from the upper left quadrant—the primacists—also speak the language of realpolitik. They maintain, however, that the sacrifices the prioritizers propose will weaken American power. They believe that the existing American alliance system contributes to America’s strength today and will contribute to America’s potential strength in the future. Instead of limiting American aims, the primacists are more concerned with expanding American means. They are confident this can be done if the American people have the confidence to do so.

The lower two quadrants, whose arguments I label “values-based,” operate under a different frame. The people in these quadrants believe that American foreign policy should not be evaluated by a single variable. They see connections between what America does abroad and what America is like at home. They have strong values-based commitments to specific ways of life that are expressed in their vision for American strategy.

I have labelled those in the bottom left quadrant “internationalists” because of how often they invoke the phrase “liberal international order.” This group believes that America and its allies are knit together not only by shared security interests, but also by shared values. In fact, the values shared by the liberal bloc explain why these countries share security interests in the first place. China is an authoritarian power whose influence operations threaten the integrity of democracies across the world. Many internationalists view this political-ideological threat as the most dangerous that China poses. Those in this quadrant are especially skeptical of détente; they do not believe permanent compromise with China is possible. They attribute Chinese belligerence to the communist political system that governs the country. For them, tensions in U.S.-Chinese relations are less the expected clashes between a rising power and the ruling hegemon than a battle between two incompatible social systems. Pointing to the close cooperation that ties Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China together, the internationalists argue (contra the prioritizers) that the world is gripped in a general contest between liberal order and resurgent authoritarianism whose different parts cannot be disentangled from each other.

Those in the bottom right quadrant—the restrainers—also think about foreign affairs through a regime lens, but the belligerent regime in question is their own. Republican restrainers link the liberal international order to the free trade agreements all Trumpists despise and the administrative “deep state” all Trumpists distrust. They see the liberal international order as an international extension of the progressive order they are trying to tear down at home.

There are echoes of the 1960s New Left in the restrainer argument. Both the new left of yesterday and the new right of today are rebellions against “the establishment.” Both reject the pieties of their day; both see a bloated national security state as a symbol of the dehumanizing values they reject. Both groups correctly point out that there is no natural limit to the quest for primacy. Both argue that a totalizing foreign policy will lead to the bureaucratization of American life.   

Only the most radical restrainers are ready for a 21^st-century march on the Pentagon. Most aim for an easier target: a relatively modest foreign policy. Instead of defending an entire international order, it is enough to defend America. Instead of deterring authoritarianism, it is enough to deter China. China does not need to be defeated—it is enough to convince the Chinese to accept some sort of détente.

This is all pretty similar to the ends sought by the prioritizers. Little wonder so many of the primacists and internationalists I interviewed believed the prioritizers were restrainers in disguise! Again and again I heard this accusation made: prioritizer arguments are just an attempt to make isolationism sexy. The prioritizers do not actually believe in realpolitik—realpolitik is just a respectable way to attack the existing international order they despise.

There is an irony to this critique. Just as primacists and internationalists condemn the false face of the prioritizers, so the prioritizers and the restrainers condemn the false face of the primacists! Many of those I interviewed insisted that their primacist opponents made such-and-such argument not for the realpolitik reasons they professed, but because of their (hidden) commitment to liberal ideals. Ideals that cannot be defended on their own merits had to be prettied up with talk of hard power.

All of these suspicions of subterfuge are overblown. Both primacists and prioritizers believe the arguments they make. Yet their suspicions are revealing! All sides clearly believe there is political advantage in couching one’s arguments in realpolitik logic. That fact alone tells us something about the likely contours of a Trump presidency—and perhaps the beliefs of Trump himself.