The occupation of Greenland, threats to annex Canada, unilateral tariff hikes, and the catastrophe of the Iran war.
President Donald Trump's foreign policy has been reckless, chaotic, and seriously unstable. Yet on U.S.-China relations, it may turn out that he is pursuing the right policy. The recent interactions between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping revealed a side of Trump rarely seen. He appeared courteous and deferential, and went out of his way to emphasize his personal rapport with Xi. Xi, by contrast, remained formal and restrained, never showing any particular warmth. This asymmetry is telling. Trump is obsessed with power. He thinks in terms of dominance rather than ideology or values. He insults European allies because he knows how dependent they are on U.S. military protection and access to the American market.
But on China, he has come to recognize a fact that many in Washington still find emotionally hard to accept: that the Chinese government possesses enormous economic, technological, industrial, and military capabilities of its own, and can wield them effectively. So Trump has evolved from a hostile posture toward one of competition and cooperation. That may be precisely what U.S.-China relations require today.
Compare Trump's recent visit to China with the Biden administration's U.S.-China meeting in 2021. At that time, the United States publicly rebuked China before television cameras over human rights, cyberattacks, and the international order. Chinese diplomats responded angrily in kind. It resembled a cable-news shouting match more than a serious diplomatic exchange. Many centrist Democrats fear being framed as "soft on China." So they often resort to extreme language and escalate symbolic confrontations. Former President Joe Biden expressed skepticism about the first Trump administration's tariffs on China and pledged to remove them, but in practice kept nearly all of them in place. Biden never visited China during his term, nor did he invite Xi to Washington.
Trump's biggest weapon is that he faces no attack from the right. He came to power after the 2016 election by fiercely blaming the Chinese government for manufacturing job losses, trade imbalances, and industrial decline. In a sense, Trump's move resembles the visit to the Soviet Union by hardline hawk Ronald Reagan. The reason Trump can pull off a similar shift is his confidence that his base will follow him wherever he leads. One need only see how quickly so many MAGA (Make America Great Again) figures reversed their position on intervention in Iran the moment he signaled support for military action.
So why does a cooperative approach to China make sense? Because China is not the Soviet Union. At the end of the Cold War, the Soviet economy was smaller than Italy's. China, by contrast, is the world's second-largest economy, the largest trading partner of more than 120 countries, and a technology power across fields ranging from electric vehicles and batteries to drones, advanced manufacturing, and artificial intelligence (AI). China's manufacturing output exceeds that of the United States, Japan, and Germany combined.
An attempt to wage a full-scale Cold War against such a country would not be like the struggle with the Soviet Union, when the world was already divided. It would mean tearing the global economy itself to pieces. American consumers would face inflation and supply shocks, and American companies would lose access to one of the world's largest markets.
Of course, the United States and China are competitors. In a polarized world, this is an unavoidable reality, and the two countries will compete economically, militarily, and strategically for decades to come. But competition need not mean complete decoupling. The two countries must compete fiercely while continuing trade and dialogue, and cooperate where possible on nuclear stability, AI safety, pandemics, and financial crises. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union maintained arms control talks because both understood that unmanaged competition could end in catastrophe. The same holds true today. If Trump has come to recognize this basic reality, then at least on U.S.-China relations, his pragmatism makes ample sense.
