President Donald Trump has adopted a hardline approach to China policy in the first three months of his second term, diverging from his predecessor’s and even his own first-term policies.
Trump’s first term marked a significant shift from the decades-long U.S.–China policy, which had sought economic cooperation with Beijing in the hope of creating conditions for political reforms in the communist country.
Recognizing the futility of this approach, Trump’s first administration took a tougher stance on China, imposing tariffs on Chinese goods to level the playing field and implementing export controls to maintain America’s lead in advanced technology. The Biden administration took a similar approach and increased these measures for selected sectors and products.
In his current term, Trump has upped the ante.
Rather than reacting to China’s moves, the president is proactively rearranging the game board, according to Christopher Balding, a senior fellow at UK-based think tank the Henry Jackson Society.
Trump is using tariffs to open the door to radical change and is “creating a global trade bloc of countries that are allied against China,” Balding told The Epoch Times.
Trump’s actions on China are not just to address trade imbalances, according to Yeh Yao-Yuan, a professor of international studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He said the president is using tariffs and trade to weaken the global influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The CCP has sensed the unprecedented challenge—Chinese state media outlets have called the U.S.–China tariff conflict a “battle for national destiny.”
It’s the underlying reason that the Chinese regime is alone in increasing its retaliatory tariffs on the United States over multiple rounds, according to Mike Sun, a U.S.-based businessman with decades of experience advising foreign investors and traders doing business in China. He used an alias to protect himself from reprisals from the regime.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has claimed that respect should precede trade talks. In the CCP parlance, that means that the United States cannot restrict China’s rise and development, according to Sun.
Because the current tariff standoff is a symptom of the larger U.S.–China conflict, rather than the cause, the three experts do not see much room for meaningful negotiation for either side.
Taking on CCP’s Belt and Road
Outside the trade war, the Trump administration has set its sights on removing the CCP’s influence over the Panama Canal.“China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China,” Trump said in his inauguration speech in January. “We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”
The waterway is a strategic chokepoint that plays a crucial role in U.S. military and economic activities, serving as a vital passage for warships and cargo between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
By addressing Panama, the administration has also begun to address the regime’s Maritime Silk Road, Sun told The Epoch Times.
The Maritime Silk Road is a component of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, also known as One Belt, One Road, the flagship foreign policy program of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He established the initiative in 2013, his first year as the Party’s top leader.
Beijing uses the Belt and Road Initiative to expand its economic and military influence through global infrastructure development.
In 2017, months after cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan, Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela visited Beijing. At a meeting with Xi, Varela signed Belt and Road agreements, making the country the first in Latin America to join the program.
With Panama as its base, Beijing expanded the Belt and Road platform to more than a dozen countries in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Xi also visited the Panama Canal in 2018.
The CCP has focused on expanding its influence through the Global South, particularly in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, according to Michael Shoebridge, founder and director of think tank Strategic Analysis Australia.
He told The Epoch Times that Beijing’s path to establishing its version of the global order is to dominate the Global South economically.
“A security, strategic, and political partnership is a natural following,” Shoebridge said.
Now, the CCP’s influence in Panama is being dismantled.
“We are going to study the possibility of whether it can be finished earlier or not,” Mulino said on Feb. 2. “I think it is due for renewal in one or two years.”
Panama, the first Latin American country to join the Belt and Road Initiative, will also become the first to drop out.
In early March, a U.S. business consortium led by BlackRock struck a deal with CK Hutchinson to purchase the rights to operate their ports at each end of the Panama Canal.
On March 28, Chinese authorities put the deal under investigation, effectively halting it.
The Trump administration has also taken action on land.
The corridor runs from India to Cyprus and Greece, passing through Israel, Italy, and France. It will compete with the current shipping route via the Suez Canal.
“In the direction we were going, we were going to wake up one day and realize the Chinese were setting up naval bases in the Western Hemisphere from where they can threaten us. We were going to wake up and realize that they were the dominant trading partner with all the countries that are our neighbors,” he said.
The Trump administration is “beginning to reverse all of that,” he said.
Trump’s actions have already put Xi on the defensive, Balding said.
The last time the CCP held a meeting like this was 12 years ago, shortly after Xi launched the Belt and Road Initiative.
‘30 Seconds Into a 3-Hour Movie’
Trump’s new approach to the Chinese regime is not without risks and challenges, according to experts. Whether other countries align with the United States or China will affect global leadership.Shoebridge says the tariffs during Trump’s first term were good moves but that the president’s universal tariffs on allied countries this term are eroding trust between the United States and its allies.
Amy K. Mitchell, a founding partner at geopolitical consultancy Kilo Alpha Strategies, said “The U.S. has to be careful about how it plays its cards now, so as to not alienate our natural allies, and to recognize at the end of the day who the adversary is.”
China is also working to pull U.S. allies closer to Beijing, including making overtures to the European Union and hosting the Spanish prime minister.
Yeh said U.S. allies’ different economic and security approaches have so far led them to maintain good relations with the United States while still participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
But that might be changing, he said.
Yeh said Trump’s first 100 days were laying the groundwork for countries to make a mutually exclusive choice between the United States and China. Going forward, no country will be able to play both sides anymore, he said.
Gordan Chang, a China expert, sounded the alarm on the stakes involved.
“It is more than just a trade war, more than just a tariff war, and we better win it.”
How allies react to the pressure of aligning with the United States vis-à-vis China is yet to be seen.
The Trump administration has spent its first 100 days building its defense personnel, according to Mitchell, so U.S. policy on China isn’t as fully formed on the security front as it is on the economic side.
The showdown between the world’s largest and second-largest economies could unfold in various ways, Balding said, but it’s too soon to predict the outcome.
“We’re 30 seconds into a three-hour movie, so we can’t be judging [Trump] on how well he has done,” he said.
“In reality, you would have to judge him probably five years after he left office.”
