Wall Street’s Priorities
This can be said with confidence because even though U.S. investment and retirement accounts are heavily invested in fraudulent Chinese companies, American money managers have a strong financial motivation to ignore Trump’s order. Big Chinese money and the lure of an open Chinese market to U.S. financial services and global investment firms are driving their behavior.Both promise to deliver great financial windfalls to Wall Street investment banks. In fact, even though the executive order specifically identifies how U.S. capital markets are enabling China’s military and industrial growth to pose growing threats to America both at home and abroad and undermine U.S. financial stability, Wall Street doesn’t care.
Biden has the opportunity to prove his mettle up front by enforcing Trump’s executive order and reining in the big investment banks. It would also send a message to both allies and China alike, Biden’s political Achilles heel, that he has a clear understanding of the present challenges and is unencumbered by the past.
But if those things don’t happen, it would free up the U.S. financial community’s singular priority, which is making money, even at the expense of national security.
Undercutting the Trump Legacy
But there are more aspects to Trump’s China policy than blocking China’s access to U.S. stock markets and indexes, as important as those things are. Will Biden’s presidency undercut Trump’s hard-line approach to trade with China? Or will he choose a middle way? In either case, Biden needs a strategy that encompasses protecting intellectual property rights, keeping a closer eye on academic exchange programs, closer relations with Taiwan, and even such “minor” things as internet apps.If past is prologue, multilateral agreements tend not to favor the United States. That may or may not be the case; it remains to be seen.
Will Biden Curtail Academic, Research Exchanges?
A significant part of China’s IP theft apparatus is its deep and pervasive academic relationship with U.S. universities and researchers. Through various initiatives such as the Confucius Institutes and the Thousand Talents program, the Chinese regime has been able to gather enormous amounts of IP and technological innovation.China: ‘A Competitor, Not an Adversary’
As vice president of the eight-year Obama administration under which these efforts flourished, why should we expect a President Biden to behave any differently?Will Biden Abandon Taiwan?
This is particularly important regarding U.S.–Taiwan relations. On Jan. 9, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that restrictions limiting contacts between Taiwan and U.S. officials will be removed. This effectively means an official recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state, a key part of America’s “One China” policy, which only recognized the Beijing government as the government of China and Taiwan.Will the United States revert to the One China policy? What will the Biden administration say or do if China invades Taiwan? Will we see a return to the United States enabling the rise of China as the dominant global power, or will Biden challenge the CCP?
We don’t know. Perhaps a simpler question will do: Will a Biden–Harris administration rise to the challenge that the CCP poses to the United States?
We'll soon find out.