The victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election on November 5 sent reverberations throughout the world. In predicting his next moves, the possible, the likely, and the reasonable are often unduly conflated. The hyperbolic and bombastic rhetoric put out by his campaign, buoyed by the likes of Project 2025 and a motley crew of recalcitrant realists, doctrinal protectionists, and cultural reactionaries, does not exactly help with our understanding.
A fundamental question lingers on the minds of geopolitical watchers on both sides of the Pacific: What does Trump 2.0 mean for the Sino-American relationship?
What Would Trump’s China Policy Likely Look Like?
There were few areas where Vice President Kamala Harris and her triumphant rival saw eye-to-eye during the campaign, but one point of common ground was the perception of China. There is an increasingly entrenched and largely normalized view held in Washington that the United States is uniquely confronted by a systemic rival in China, and that swift and assertive responses are needed to prevent the displacement of U.S. hegemony by a state beholden to neither the values nor interests of Washington.
The divergence between the two candidates was one of means – a Harris presidency would seek to kneecap China’s rise through a carefully crafted and partially effective policy of chokeholds, long-standing multilateral alliances, and doubling down on the Biden administration’s value-laden framing of the Sino-American rivalry as one between “democracy” and “autocracy.” Necessary guardrails would be devised through government-to-government conversations, only to buckle under the pressure of a highly caustic Congress and bipartisan consensus.
Trump’s likely approach to China, on the other hand, is best likened to Russian roulette. On one hand, he evidently has the penchant for risky gambits and transactional diplomacy. His first term saw his showering praise on Vladimir Putin in Russia and Kim Jong Un in North Korea – both individuals with whom Trump purportedly brokered “deals” with over Russian activities in the Middle East and escalating tensions in the Korean Peninsula. The Abraham Accords, a definitive achievement whose negotiation process was driven largely by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz, saw a critical breakthrough in Middle Eastern peace, and agreements between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan. Some commentators have predicted that Trump would likely take the same stance to both the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea and steer the region away from a hot war – though through what means, and with what effects, are questions that remain unanswered.
On the other hand, we have clear reasons to not be blasé about the risks of kinetic escalation in East Asia. Trump’s China advisory and foreign policy team seems set to feature a combination of individuals harboring deeply ideological grievances toward China (e.g. Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, and Robert O’Brien), a tendency to view Sino-American relations through the lenses of a great power competition that the United States must win (e.g. Ric Grenell, Elbridge Colby, Bill Hagerty), or the belief that trade globalization has been anathema to the interests of the U.S. working class and domestic interests (e.g. Robert Lighthizer, Peter Navarro).
Many of these individuals are highly qualified, capable hands, united only by a fierce, undying loyalty to Trump, a likely prerequisite for their appointment to his second-term Cabinet. Few amongst these are interested in “cooperating” with China – which they construe to be an existential risk to the United States, economically, militarily, and geostrategically. U.S. engagement with China, they would declare unequivocally, has failed.
This is not to say that Trump would be exclusively deferential to these voices. Ardent advocates of trans-Pacific supply chain integration and Sino-American financial ties would also likely have the ears of Trump – including, chiefly, the inventor-turned-political influencer-turned-social media mogul Elon Musk. Furthermore, if Trump is even remotely committed to bringing down prices in the United States – the Achilles’ heel of the outgoing administration – he must moderate some of his most extreme and self-undermining protectionist measures, so as to deliver for the MAGA crowd that voted him into office.
Expect, then, a deeply confused smorgasbord of policies from Washington on China – the product of both inter-bureaucratic and inter-factional competition, and the conflicting priorities of Trump himself. There would almost certainly be heightened trade barriers across the board, coupled with ratcheted-up export controls on sensitive technologies coordinated with some of the United States’ most committed allies, who are keen to maintain a modicum of trust in their relations with the most powerful military in the world. Targeted sanctions, asset freezes, and forced trade decoupling from China would likely be invoked – either as policy tools, or as bargaining chips – in extracting key dividends from third parties. Out of existing alliances, Trump would plausibly prefer more tightly knit and U.S.-centric multilateral arrangements – such as AUKUS or perhaps the Quad – and bilateral agreements, in which he would demand that the other parties pay their “due share.”
Trump’s team would ground such measures upon an overtly interest-driven framing. A considerable departure from value-based rhetorical contrasts can be foreseen, accompanied by a shift toward more nakedly cynical and xenophobic panning of China – in alignment with the final year of his first term, which spurred a significant increase in anti-Chinese hate crimes.
On areas such as public health and climate change, Washington would cede the opportunity for global leadership to China; in domains such as regional territorial disputes in Southeast Asia and East Asia, Trump could well take a more reticent approach – one that veers away from direct confrontation, whilst retaliating through a raft of unconventional warfare tactics.
How Will China React to Trump 2.0?
Given the above, how will China likely react to Trump’s second term?
The official read-out of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call to the newly elected Trump expressed the “hope the two sides will work in the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation to enhance dialogue and communication.” Whilst this was a continuation of the language adopted by Xi and Director of the Chinese Communist Party’s Foreign Affairs Commission Office Wang Yi, it also marked a subtle yet important departure from the call Xi made to then-newly-elected Biden four years ago, in which Xi additionally extolled “the spirit of non-conflict [and] non-confrontation.”
One possible interpretation is that, given the entrenched hardening of the U.S. stance on the bilateral relationship, the Chinese leadership now holds the view that the maintenance of “peace” is the base case and baseline of utmost importance, even if broader conflict and confrontation are inevitable along economic, technological, and geopolitical lines. Through articulating a largely contiguous message to the one it had adopted over the past three years, Beijing was cautiously testing the waters and seeking to reassure Trump 2.0 that it had not fundamentally altered its U.S. policy in response to the election outcomes. Indeed, as stated by prominent Chinese academic Zhu Feng, “after experiencing his first term, we [the Chinese leadership] have a much better understanding of Trump’s style and focus areas… U.S. policy towards China isn’t going back to the way it was – China clearly understands and accepts this.”
A key corresponding priority would thus be to establish minimal guardrails on geopolitical and military flashpoints – the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula are the top three, trailed in some distance by China’s land border dispute with India, a U.S. partner. How this could be achieved, in view of a Trump team that would likely aim to channel brinkmanship and enact the Nixonian “madman theory” paradigm, will prove to be a significant challenge for Chinese technocrats in the foreign policy apparatus in charge of seeing through the leadership’s directives.
Additionally, China would plausibly press for their own version of “China+1,” encouraging proactively state-owned enterprises and privately owned enterprises alike to “venture overseas” – diversifying and expanding their supply chains to encompass nascent manufacturing powerhouses in ASEAN and the Gulf. Latin America and Africa, long viewed as sites of developmental aid and infrastructural assistance, would increasingly be empowered with tech sharing arrangements favoring the cultivation of strong, homegrown champions. These are all seen as instrumental moves in bypassing the stiff trade barriers spearheaded by the Department of Commerce and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Furthermore, with the stimulus measures giving rise to one of the most pronounced market rallies in contemporary Chinese history and the September Politburo meeting affirming the case for more proactive measures aimed at restoring consumer confidence, it is apparent that the Chinese leadership is bent on shoring up economic vitality. Indeed, economic resilience requires both vitality and security, and restoring consumer confidence is of the utmost importance in absorbing the sizable abundance of supply of cheap, high-quality, advanced technological goods – like electric vehicles. The jury is still out on whether China’s adopted raft of monetary and fiscal stimulus measures are, in fact, sufficient.
Recommendations on a Pragmatic Path Forward
If China is to weather a second term of Trump, there are several key steps it must undertake. The first concerns stabilizing and rebuilding its frayed ties with Northeast Asia (Japan and South Korea) and the European Union.
In Northeast Asia, Trump’s excess fixation over cost-benefit balancing would likely dilute confidence in U.S. security guarantees for the region. Seoul has good reasons to worry about the increasing convergence and synergy between Russia and North Korea. Tokyo has equally valid reasons to worry that an undue escalation in military tensions in its immediate neighborhood would derail its attempts at seeing through a more sustained economic recovery. It is in China’s, South Korea’s, and Japan’s interests to arrive at a sustainable modus vivendi of regional security – especially in light of the unpredictability of Washington’s approach to the region.
Meanwhile, Sino-European relations have been deeply damaged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and European resentment toward China for its purported support for the Russian cause, as well as the economic reality that European manufacturers are increasingly outstripped and displaced by qualitatively and quantitatively superior counterparts in China. Yet with Trump’s Ukraine policy effectively portending the withdrawal of U.S. support for its war efforts, European nation-states would face an incredibly adversarial geopolitical environment – with a triumphant Russia emerging from the three-year-long war.
While Trump and his advisers take issue with China for what it is, European states largely take issue with China for what it does – from their respective perspectives. Repairing Sino-European relations will require an acknowledgment of the roots of the trust deficit. If China is sincere about stabilizing its ties with a sizable market and robust source of investment and capital, it should exert its influence over all involved actors to press for a viable European security architecture – with reduced dependence upon an increasingly erratic Washington – in the aftermath of the war, as well as contributing actively toward the post-war reconstruction and humanitarian aid in Ukraine and beyond.
In addition, China should be prepared to step up to provide the various global public goods that the Trump administration may be uninterested in supplying. President-elect Trump has already announced his intention to withdraw (again) from the Paris Agreement – fully indicative of his views on climate change. The only countering voice in his inner circle may be Elon Musk, who declared himself “super pro climate.”
With its immense technological lead in renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, and batteries, China is in an excellent position to spearhead the renewable transformation across the Global South. In areas such as public health, AI governance and regulation, and macroeconomic and developmental challenges, Beijing must correspondingly step up its efforts to demonstrate the viable plurality of pathways of development and growth.
Finally, for China to become a truly global power, its government must craft both its externally facing rhetoric and policies with a global audience in mind. The Chinese state has long been most successful in catering to its sizable domestic audience. It should also be more cognizant of the way its actions and words are perceived and understood abroad – grappling fully with the challenges of cross-contextual and -cultural communication. Assertiveness does not always work – indeed, it could well backfire in sowing seeds of frustration, mistrust, and resentment.
The projection of strength does not amount necessarily to actual strength. Speaking softly while carrying an appropriately sized stick could well be preferable to vociferous admonishment and wielding a disproportionately long stick. China would do well to learn from the mistakes made by the first Trump administration, and remember the John F. Kennedy adage, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”