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Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris disagree on many things, but both say they will pursue tough and confrontational policies toward China if elected president in November.
Although a harder line on Beijing wins rare bipartisan support these days, many specific China policy positions of the Democratic and Republican nominees have received relatively little public attention. It’s unclear how they would respond to a military conflict with Beijing in the Taiwan Strait, a large-scale and threatening military buildup by Beijing, and the continued loss of American technology, intellectual property and industry to Chinese rivals.
A review by The Washington Times of statements on China by the candidates and their advisers shows that both Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris expect to continue resisting what they say are the assertive anti-U.S. policies of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Although it may not be a top campaign issue, China will likely be a priority for whoever wins the Nov. 5 election. Mr. Xi has cast the U.S. as an enemy determined to cripple China’s rise as an economic and military superpower, an indication that relations between the two countries will remain tense.
Polling data shows a tight presidential race, with the candidates tied or nearly tied in the polls.
During the recent presidential debate, neither candidate raised many of the specifics contributing to growing U.S.-China tensions, including aggressive Chinese military activities in the South China Sea and toward Taiwan, cyberattacks and electronic reconnaissance raids inside critical U.S. infrastructure, and efforts by Beijing to obtain American technology.
Ms. Harris accused Mr. Trump of waging a harmful trade war with China. “A policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century,” she said.
In response, Mr. Trump defended the tariffs he imposed on China. He said the levies brought in “billions of dollars” and were so successful that President Biden kept them in place.
Trump’s turn on China
To address China, Mr. Trump appears determined to instill new vigor into policies he implemented in 2017 shortly after taking office. For the first time in decades, he ended the identification of the communist regime in Beijing as a friend and trading partner and instead labeled China a strategic rival.
Mr. Trump focused his policies on addressing economic inequities through tariffs designed to counter what he saw as Chinese exploitation of American openness.
His policies also sought to curb huge losses of technology to China, prosecuting spies and agents recruited by Beijing and acting on Chinese human rights abuses, such as declaring the repression against minority Uyghurs in western China to be genocide, an act that infuriated China’s Communist Party leadership.
The Trump policy emphasized American interests over those of other nations and sought greater reciprocity and fairness in ties with China.
Critics saw the “America First” policies as isolationism, designed to ensure Chinese-American hostility and a clash of interests across the Indo-Pacific region. Supporters said the populist approach applied a new standard: All policies and programs were to be gauged on whether or not they advance American interests and support the American people.
Mr. Trump views foreign policy as transactional, blending his business world experience with geopolitics. That often leaves him open to criticism that he is willing to cut deals with foreign adversaries, strain relations with traditional allies and even talk to dictators if he thinks a deal can be reached.
Mr. Trump’s campaign-trail comments about Mr. Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un indicate that he will continue assertive personal diplomacy with foreign leaders, especially China.
The former president said last month there has been “no greater critic of China than me,” but he added that he respects Mr. Xi. As president and head of the ruling Communist Party, Mr. Xi has emerged as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. Mr. Trump said he understands China’s drive for more power and its willingness to exploit American generosity to help achieve its goals.
China “took advantage of us, and why shouldn’t they?” Mr. Trump said recently. “I mean, if we were stupid enough to let them do it — they made hundreds of billions of dollars a year, $507 billion. And most years over that, and now it’s more, and I had them down to a much smaller [amount],” Mr. Trump said on Fox News.
“And I put massive tariffs on them. Nobody got any money from China, but I got hundreds of billions of dollars from China.”
A 2018 White House report on China’s “economic aggression” estimated that Beijing was acquiring more than $500 billion annually in American technology, much of it through theft of U.S. intellectual property.
The COVID-19 crisis also strained U.S.-China relations. The Trump administration was increasingly critical of Beijing’s handling of the pandemic’s emergence.
Mr. Trump said the Chinese respect strength and have exploited the Biden administration’s “weakness.” He predicted a “good relationship” with China if he wins a second four-year term in the White House.
Harris and Biden
Ms. Harris’ presidential campaign motto is “A New Way Forward.” As listed recently on the campaign website, however, her proposed policies toward China closely follow Mr. Biden’s.
That approach has been to both engage and confront China, building alliances to counter China while seeking accommodation on issues such as climate change.
Mr. Biden and his aides have labored to repair bilateral ties and reestablish direct contacts with the Xi government after a visit by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan and the notorious Chinese surveillance balloon incident in early 2023 that sent relations plummeting.
Under a section on keeping America safe and secure, the Democrats’ campaign website described Ms. Harris as an effective diplomat who met with Mr. Xi and made clear that “she will always stand up for American interests in the face of China’s threats.”
The 2024 Democratic platform, written before Ms. Harris replaced Mr. Biden as the nominee, states that the next administration will continue managing strategic competition with China to avoid a conflict. The platform calls for avoiding a costly “spiral to conflict” with China while seeking cooperation.
Releasing the platform last month, the party said it reflects the joint efforts of Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris to advance a progressive agenda for the next administration. Since then, the vice president has tried to show at least a little daylight from her boss on China policy.
In her Aug. 23 nomination acceptance speech, Ms. Harris declared that she would seek to ensure that the U.S., not China, “wins the competition for the 21st century,” a shift from the Biden approach to managing competition, as stated in the platform.
The platform also notes the administration’s frequent warship and aircraft operations to maintain freedom of navigation in Asia, support for regional allies in confronting China and expanding the military presence in Japan and the Philippines.
China remains the sole global actor seeking to reshape the U.S.-led international order through growing military, economic, diplomatic and technological power, the platform says. The next Democratic administration would continue what the platform calls “tough but smart” policies. Those policies oppose Beijing’s unfair trade practices and aim to prevent China from using U.S. openness to obtain technologies that can threaten U.S. and allied security.
The Democratic blueprint rejects a complete “decoupling” of the U.S. and Chinese economies while saying it wants to lower the risks of economic engagement. That translates into a continued effort to prevent American high technology, specifically advanced microchips, from being exported to China, where the technology could strengthen Beijing’s growing military power.
As Mr. Trump noted, a Harris administration plans to keep tariffs on Chinese goods, including steel, aluminum, semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries, critical minerals, solar cells, ship-to-shore cranes and medical products he initiated. Following Mr. Biden’s lead, Ms. Harris said she would try to work with China on issues of joint interest, including stemming the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. and working on policies to address climate change.
Taiwan and the election
The biggest potential flash point in U.S.-China relations — the status of Taiwan — has brought out some subtle differences in tone and emphasis from the two candidates. The Democratic platform calls for continuing support for Taiwan as it faces mounting pressure and intimidation by the mainland, including near-constant Chinese warplane and warship operations around the self-ruled island.
Mr. Trump took aim at Taiwan during a television interview, leading some analysts to suspect the former president may again take a more transactional approach to support the democratic island Mr. Xi has vowed one day to conquer.
The former president told Fox News that Taiwan “did take all of our chip business.”
“We should have stopped them,” he said. “We should have taxed them. We should have tariffed them.”
Mr. Trump also suggested that Taipei pay the United States for its defense needs. He compared the U.S. to an insurance company providing needed deterrence of a Chinese attack.
Mr. Biden has declared several times that U.S. forces would defend Taiwan from a Chinese military attack, a position outlined in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. The act states that the president and Congress will determine appropriate action in response to dangers to U.S. interests from threats to Taiwan.
Mr. Trump, who set a precedent of his own as president-elect in December 2016 with a direct phone discussion with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, told a meeting of donors in May that if China tried to militarily take over Taiwan, he would “bomb” Beijing, The Washington Post reported.
The former president said the Taiwan Strait remains unsecured and that China has been aggressive in sending warships around the island.
China could easily take control of Taiwan but wants to avoid destroying the island’s semiconductor industry, which Mr. Trump said is “the apple of President Xi’s eye.”
Trump White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said in an email that a future Trump administration policy toward China would include higher tariffs, increased defense spending and the transfer of half the U.S. troops in Germany to the Indo-Pacific region. About 35,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Germany.
Mr. O’Brien, who may be appointed to a senior national security post if the former president wins, wrote in a recent article that Mr. Trump does not adhere to dogma but “to his own instincts and to traditional American principles” rather than “global orthodoxies.”
“Trump recognizes that a successful foreign policy requires joining forces with friendly governments and people elsewhere,” Mr. O’Brien wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs.
He said Mr. Trump follows President Andrew Jackson’s approach toward China and other foreign policy issues: Be forceful and compelled to action when necessary but be wary of strategic overreach.
Mr. O’Brien said Chinese military threats against allies, constant cyberattacks and corrosive economic and trade practices must be addressed.
“This morass of American weakness and failure cries out for a Trumpian restoration of peace through strength. Nowhere is that need more urgent than in the contest with China.”
Miles Yu, a State Department policymaker in the Trump administration, said Mr. Trump did not say he would not defend Taiwan, only that he thinks Taipei should share more costs for collective defense.
“The defense of Taiwan is enshrined in the Taiwan Relations Act,” said Mr. Yu, now with the Hudson Institute. “The joint defense of Taiwan is a national consensus. To change that will be extremely difficult.”
The Democrats also would pursue the U.S. “one-China policy” that, unlike Beijing’s policy, does not recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been mentioned as a possible defense secretary in a Trump administration, has called for an end to the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity and full diplomatic recognition of Taiwan.
The 2024 Republican platform, drafted by Mr. Trump’s advisers, states that Trump would seek to secure strategic independence from China. He would call on Republicans in Congress to revoke China’s most favored nation trade status and phase out imports of essential goods from China.
Mr. Trump also plans to halt Chinese purchases of U.S. real estate and industries, many of which have been allowed under the Biden administration near sensitive military sites.
The Walz factor
Analysts say Ms. Harris’ policies toward China would be influenced by her vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has praised China’s communist system.
Mr. Walz taught English in China in the early 1990s, when U.S.-Chinese educational exchanges were far more common than they are today. According to a 1991 article in the Alliance Times-Herald in Nebraska, he held favorable views of some aspects of the communist system that involved equality and mutual sharing.
The Democrats’ vice presidential nominee also made about 30 visits to China that are the subject of an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, which is looking into reports that the trips were paid for in part by the Chinese government. The FBI earlier this month declined requests from the committee for information it has on Mr. Walz’s ties to China.
Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said the panel “must understand the full extent of Mr. Walz’s ties to the CCP.”
With his background, Mr. Walz could have a significant say over China policy in a Harris administration. Critics say that would undermine the bipartisan approach to confronting China.
“Harris isn’t serious about China, despite her prevarication [in the debate], and Trump personally remains wary of another COVID-type spitting contest,” said former State Department China expert John Tkacik. “I suspect, based only on open sources, that Walz will rein in any further tendencies to confront China, and Harris will go along.”
Mr. Tkacik said Mr. Trump remains wary of China and a Trump administration would quietly build up the U.S. capacity to push back against Beijing’s campaign to challenge the U.S.-led international order and to promote its communist system around the globe.
Mr. Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, contrasts with Mr. Walz. He pointedly criticized the current administration’s China policies in numerous campaign appearances.
Mr. Vance has called China the most serious danger to the United States and faulted Beijing for weakening the American economy.
“That’s the biggest threat to our country, and we are completely distracted from it,” Mr. Vance said of China.
At the Republican National Convention in July, Mr. Vance said a Trump administration would protect American workers’ wages from predatory Chinese practices.
New policies would seek to “stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens,” he said.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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