Trump is enabling Chinese power

An incompetent, selfish, inwardly focused administration is making America less of an obstacle to China's rise.

Photo by Kremlin via Wikimedia Commons

Beginning in Donald Trump’s first term in office, and then especially during the Biden administration, it seemed as if the world was moving into Cold War 2. A U.S.-led democratic bloc was facing off against the “New Axis” — a China-led bloc that included Russia, North Korea, and possibly Iran. The contest promised to spill over beyond the military and diplomatic realms, as both blocs strove for economic and technological supremacy.

Plenty of the Biden administration’s policies were oriented around the idea of that contest. Export controls on the Chinese semiconductor industry, targeted tariffs on Chinese tech products, and industrial policies — all championed by Biden’s National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan — were all attempts to keep the U.S. at the pole position of advanced manufacturing, in order to reduce the risk that China would become the global hegemon.

When Donald Trump ran for President in 2024, I immediately worried that his priorities on Cold War 2 had shifted from his first term. Although Trump had a reputation as a China hawk from his first term, he now seemed to have abandoned the idea. He came out against the TikTok divestment bill, and threatened to cancel the bipartisan CHIPS Act that represented America’s best hope of retaining meaningful semiconductor manufacturing capacity.

Why would Trump switch from a China hawk to an appeaser? He might have gone soft in his old age. He might be paid off by pro-China billionaires like Jeff Yass, or by other more opaque crypto schemes originating in China. But the truly scary possibility was that Trump had actually decided to side with the New Axis itself.

Elements within the Trump administration and the MAGA movement appear to view Putin’s Russia as a friend, or at least a fellow-traveler. They despise modern Europe, which they view as having been corrupted and overrun by wokeness, leftism, and Muslim immigration. Russia, by contrast, still paints itself as a defender of traditional values. The hardcore elements of the MAGA movement turned strongly against aid to Ukraine, culminating in JD Vance berating Ukrainian President Zelensky in the Oval Office.

China is Russia’s most important friend and ally, buying Russian oil, facilitating Russia’s financial transactions, and selling Russia much of the materiel it needs for its war effort. And so if America was shifting its diplomatic posture to be more aligned with Russia, it might make sense for it to be more neutral toward China. One possibility was that Trump would voluntarily limit America’s influence to the Western Hemisphere, allocating East Asia as China’s sphere of influence and Europe and Central Asia as Russia’s sphere. This was an old dream of Charles Lindbergh, whose “America First” movement Trump’s people have deliberately copied.

That Lindberghian scenario is looking less likely these days. Trump has overruled his subordinates and resumed aid to Ukraine after a pause. Now he’s planning to ship even more weapons to Ukraine, and is reportedly urging the Ukrainians to use American weapons to conduct strikes within Russia. Trump’s subordinates may grumble, but the MAGA movement does Trump’s bidding — already, his voters appear to be shifting to a pro-Ukraine stance:

Meanwhile, Trump and his people have done some hawkish things toward China. The “Liberation Day” tariffs fell hardest on China, even though they were eventually “paused” like most of the others. Trump has increased weapons sales to Taiwan, and even the recent pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine came from Trump subordinates who wanted to focus on deterring China instead.

So it appears that America will not be joining the New Axis soon. Whatever the Trump administration is doing with regards to geopolitics and world affairs, it doesn’t seem to fit the simple story of an alignment flip. What’s going on is a whole lot more complex, disjointed, and confusing.

But having said all that, it still seems true that the general nature of the Trump administration — irresolute, internally divided, often incompetent, deeply corrupt, and focused more on domestic culture wars than on external conflicts — will weaken America’s nascent attempt to stand up to Chinese power.

A striking example of this is Trump’s willingness to back off of the export controls that were keeping America ahead of China in the AI race. Shortly after Trump was elected last year, I wrote that what Trump did with regards to export controls would be an important bellwether of his stance toward China:

[T]here’s one big important thing Trump could do to sabotage America’s effort to stand up to Chinese power. He could cancel the export controls that the Biden administration placed on the Chinese semiconductor industry…If he keeps them, it’s because he wants to stand up to China, and if he cancels them, it means he doesn’t.

And make no mistake — China really, really wants those export controls gone. Despite early wailing and gnashing of teeth over Huawei’s creation of a 7nm chip, the U.S. export controls have almost certainly been very effective in slowing down China’s chip industry…They’re not killing China’s chip industry, but they’re slowing it down in important ways, and letting the U.S. retain its technological edge…If Trump cancels the export controls, it will mean he’s destroying America’s best chance to keep its weapons ahead of China’s weapons…

[I]f Trump does cancel export controls, it will be the strongest possible signal that his administration wants to abandon any attempt to stand up to Chinese power. Don’t be fooled by tariff theater — this is the real test.

As in so many cases, Trump’s actual policies with regards to export controls have been inconsistent, confusing, and sometimes hastily reversed. In May, the administration put export controls on chemicals and software used to make semiconductors, plugging a major hole in Biden’s original policy. Trump also considered curbing sales of the H20 chips that Nvidia had designed specifically to get around Biden’s export controls. And so far, Trump hasn’t touched the export controls on chipmaking equipment, and has even considered expanding these.

But now, Trump has reversed his earlier moves on AI chip and software export controls! Bloomberg reports:

Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. plan to resume sales of some AI chips in China after securing Washington’s assurances that such shipments would get approved, a dramatic reversal from the Trump administration’s earlier stance on measures designed to limit Beijing’s AI ambitions…US government officials told Nvidia they would green-light export licenses for its H20 artificial intelligence accelerator…Nvidia designed the less-advanced H20 chip to comply with earlier China trade curbs from Washington, which Trump’s team tightened in April to block H20 sales to the Asian country without a US permit…

[Nvidia] Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang — who met with President Donald Trump last week and is currently in Beijing attending a government-sponsored conference — appeared on Chinese state broadcaster CCTV shortly after Nvidia announced the decision, saying the company had secured approval to begin shipping….

Washington in recent weeks has lifted a spate of export controls — including on chip design software — imposed ahead of last month’s trade talks in London[.]

This doesn’t appear to be a case of Trump joining the New Axis, or realigning America to be a supporter of Chinese power. Instead, it’s a narrower capitulation.

Why did Trump cave on H20 chips and design software? The most obvious reason is that Trump has simply chickened out yet again. China has been hurting the U.S. with its own export controls on rare earths — minerals for which China controls the global mining and refining, which are key to the creation of powerful electric motors and lots of electronic components. Much of America’s economy, including the defense industry itself, has become dependent on Chinese rare earths. The Trump administration has been frantically searching for alternative sources of rare earths, but these will take a lot of time to develop; in the meantime, China has discovered an incredibly effective way to threaten America’s economy.

Another reason for Trump’s capitulation might be pressure from Nvidia, which is now the world’s most valuable company, as well as a personal appeal from Jensen Huang himself. Whether this involved some sort of promise of political support for Trump, we’ll never know — certainly, Trump seems open to such deals, and Huang has loudly praised Trump’s tariffs and other policies in recent months. But even without any quid pro quo, Trump is certainly capable of being persuaded by personal appeals from rich and powerful men.

But whatever the reason, the Trump administration’s willingness to cancel key export controls on China, while not getting any obvious concession from the Chinese in return, bodes ominously for the strategy of economic containment that Biden’s people developed. In fact, at the same time that Trump announced his capitulation, China just slapped yet more export controls on America, this time on battery technology. Trump is frantically and preemptively surrendering, apparently getting nothing in return, while China’s economic warfare continues to advance.

Nor are export controls the only — or even the most important — way that the Trump administration’s actions are paving the way for an expansion of Chinese power at the expense of the U.S. Consider Trump’s tariffs on U.S. allies like Japan, Europe, and South Korea.

China is a much larger country than the U.S., and it can manufacture many more units of almost any product. China thus has a natural advantage in scale, which is key to reducing manufacturing costs. Being a much smaller country, the only way for the U.S. to rival China’s scale would be to essentially combine its markets with those of other countries — Europe, Japan, Korea, and if possible India — so that manufacturers from all those countries would have markets that exceeded China’s in size. In addition, U.S. allies produce crucial components that are key to U.S. supply chains, complementing American technology with their own.

It is exactly those allies that Trump is attacking with his latest round of tariffs. Having backed off of his China tariffs after finding that country to be too hard a target, Trump is looking for wimpier countries to bully with his tariff threats — and he has settled on the smaller countries that formed the backbone of America’s alliance system during Cold War 1. Cutting those allies off from America’s markets — which will inevitably cut American exports off from allied markets as well — will fragment the American bloc and degrade its manufacturing ability, even as China remains unweakened. The tariffs will also generate ill will among America’s allies, of course, making military and diplomatic coordination harder as well.

Next, Trump is taking a pickaxe to the foundations of American technological supremacy. There are several reasons the U.S. managed to stay at the forefront of global innovation and high-tech industries for a century — dynamic companies, the venture funding system, and many other private-sector advantages among them. But government-funded research was always key; America often simply outspent its technological rivals, via the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and so on.

Now, because of culture-war concerns, Trump is attacking government research. Alarmed that the scientific establishment has become a bastion of wokeness (which is often true), Trump and his people are simply trying to defund institutions that they don’t believe share their values:

What happens when we gut federal science funding?

Here’s a snapshot, from Tyler Norris:

This has been coupled with an attempt to push Chinese talent out of America — a boneheaded move that seems hawkish but ironically ends up strengthening China and weakening the U.S.

In May, David Victor wrote a scathing piece in Foreign Affairs explaining how Trump’s policies as a whole — including funding cuts, immigration cuts, tariffs, and expulsion of Chinese researchers — would help China achieve technological supremacy over America. He describes how China is capitalizing on the moment:

While the United States eviscerates its innovation system, China is staying the course. Starting in the 1990s [China] has expanded its total spending on R & D by a factor of 20…In 2025, China’s total R & D spending could surpass the United States’ for the first time. In the early 1990s, Chinese university programs did not rank at the top of any major STEM field. Today, according to U.S. News and World Report rankings, eight of the world’s top ten engineering programs are in China.

Chinese scientists are already revealing where they see their postgraduate future: at home. Two decades ago, about 95 percent of Chinese graduate students who studied in the United States stayed stateside…Today, that “stay rate” has dropped to around 80 percent and is likely to fall further, possibly quickly…Chinese returnees are going back to a country whose economy has been fine-tuned to turn innovation into production.

It seems like every day, the Trump administration announces a new policy that will weaken America’s hand against China. For example, over the past few years there has been a growing awareness that China can build many more ships than the U.S., threatening American naval supremacy. But instead of implementing a crash program to fix that dire situation, Trump has made the problem worse. John Konrad reports:

@gCaptain has confirmed from a White House source that Trump has closed the shipbuilding office at the NSC…Reuters reports that Ian Bennitt, the President’s Special Assistant for Shipbuilding at the White House, has been fired…At a recent USNI shipbuilding conference, it became clear: major shipbuilding primes are actively fighting plans to expand commercial shipbuilding…Sources inside the Pentagon say Admirals and SES are digging in their heels on several key shipbuilding objectives….Congressional sources say progress on the SHIPS Act is stalling in committee.

It’s also unlikely the new Commandant will be confirmed before the August break…The U.S. Coast Guard is slashing cutter orders left and right…Nobody has seen or heard from @SecDuffy’s new acting Maritime Administrator. The plan to centralize shipbuilding under the Department of Commerce is apparently stalled or stalling…I spoke with half a dozen senior sources in DC—every single one is frustrated.

Yes, there’s still optimism around @SECNAV’s commitment to shipbuilding but his plate is full with emerging priorities…Not a single Admiral has publicly supported the SHIPS Act or the White House’s “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance” plan. Deadlines are being missed or pencil-whipped on the Maritime Executive Order, and with the NSC shipbuilding office closing, no one knows how the next deadline will be met. Zero follow-through on Trump’s State of the Union promise to open a dedicated White House shipbuilding office. New intel confirms more Navy shipbuilding delays, including further slippage in carrier programs…It’s been 252 days since the election, and not a single new ship has been ordered…

What am I missing? The number of panicked and/or depressed calls I’ve received from DC in the last few days is unreal. I’m struggling to find a silver lining.

This doesn’t seem like deliberate Trump administration sabotage of America’s naval power; it’s too chaotic and involves too many bad actors and competing interests. Instead, it simply smacks of extreme incompetence on the part of the administration.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is purging its diplomatic corps, firing huge numbers of the State Department personnel who uphold American diplomacy and maintain our all-important system of alliances and economic partnerships. It’s not clear why this is happening, but the most likely reason is culture wars; Trump is simply purging as many progressives as he can find, everywhere he can find them.

Isolationist impulses also simply run strong within the MAGA movement. Even if there’s no explicit Lindberghian plan to surrender Asia to a Chinese sphere of influence, Trump and the people in his orbit are simply suspicious of all foreign entanglements and overseas presence. Some of these “restrainers” are arguing for America’s partial withdrawal from Asia:

[The U.S.] should scale back its military presence on China's doorstep to ease tensions with Beijing and adopt a more defensive posture, analysts of the "restraint" camp argue in a new report…Their proposals, published Wednesday by Washington, D.C., think tank Defense Priorities, include slashing the number of troops stationed in South Korea by over 60 percent and those in Japan's Okinawa by nearly one-third…Since his first term in office, President Donald Trump's orbit has included a number of "restrainers"—advocates of a less interventionist foreign policy—including Vice President JD Vance and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon…

[The proposal] would mean scaling back deployments that could further escalate tensions with China…or contentious weapons systems that could trigger a regional arms race…Redeploying U.S. forces, [the authors] contend, would reduce "free-riding" and require allies to take on more responsibility for their own defense…

The paper also recommends withdrawing all 500 U.S. military training personnel from Taiwan. "A balancing approach does not require a direct U.S. military defense of Taiwan, however, as the tiny island would not dramatically shift the balance of power," the authors wrote.

This is exactly the same sort of argument that many on the far right (and some on the far left) have made about Ukraine, Europe, and Russia. The difference is that Europe itself is capable of resisting Russia without American help, and is showing signs of being willing to do so. China, on the other hand, would certainly overwhelm Asia without America’s presence, so that U.S. withdrawal would have far more catastrophic consequences for the global balance of power.

In sum, the Trump administration and the MAGA movement simply seem incapable of prosecuting Cold War 2 in a coherent or effective manner. Trump himself is too irresolute, cowardly, and focused on personal enrichment. Too many of his subordinates harbor an isolationist view of geopolitics. The administration in general is too incompetent, too bereft of human capital, and far too focused on prosecuting domestic culture wars by burning down any institution they see as harboring wokeness.

This doesn’t mean that China is going to rule the world. Ruling the world is a very hard thing to do, and there are many obstacles other than American power — China’s own internal power struggles and the limitations of its authoritarian system, opposition from its neighbors, long-term economic and demographic challenges, and the personal flaws of Xi Jinping. But with Trump making America more and more of a geopolitical nonentity, chaos agent, and wild card, the path to hegemony looks a lot smoother for China than it did nine months ago.

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