The early weeks of President Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House suggest a sharp turn in how the United States might deal with allies in Europe or issues such as trade or the climate crisis. But how, exactly, are Trump’s policies on China different from those of his predecessor? And how does Beijing view a change in U.S. leadership?
For answers, I spoke with Rush Doshi, a China scholar and former deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council. Doshi is the author of _The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order_ and is currently director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or follow the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.
**Ravi Agrawal:** For several years now, the United States has had tariffs on Chinese goods worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Most of these initiated were by the first Trump administration. The Biden administration—your former team—kept them. So, how do you see Trump’s latest tariffs on China?
**Rush Doshi:** Let me first start with an interesting statistic. In 2017, the average U.S. tariff on Chinese goods was about 3 percent. Today, after the most recent round of tariffs, it’s 39 percent. Now, of course, U.S. goods are tariffed as well in China, and that number continues to inch up as the trade war has gone on. It’s interesting that the Trump administration has approached the tariffs in phases, which I thought that they should do, rather than do 60 percent on day one. They’ve gradually increased the tariffs to create pressure for a deal.
You’re now seeing Chinese retaliatory tariffs: 15 percent on chicken, wheat, corn, and cotton and 10 percent on soybeans, which is always a staple in a U.S.-China trade war. So it’s a very dynamic moment right now.
**RA:** But what are the tariffs designed for? Given that you supported some of these tariffs, are they an inherently good thing, as Trump seems to believe, or designed for something specific?
**RD:** The Trump administration would make different arguments at different times, so it’s hard to know which argument they think is the most important. Sometimes they’ll say the purpose of tariffs is to diversify manufacturing out of China. Now, remember, China today is about 30 to 35 percent of all global manufacturing. 25 years ago, it was 6 percent. So it’s gone up sixfold in the 25 years since it joined the World Trade Organization. That concentration is geopolitically disadvantageous for the United States, but it is economically bad for the United States and for developing countries who also want to manufacture their way to prosperity.
The second argument is that the tariffs may create leverage for a deal. And on that front, I’m not as confident that the tariffs will be successful. That said, they certainly do create a crisis—and a crisis creates a sense that the parties need to sit down and work out terms.
**RA:** The Trump administration released a memo last month called the America First Investment Policy, which, by many accounts, was quite harsh. Some China scholars read it as a call for U.S.-China decoupling. But then Trump later said he’d welcome Chinese investment. How do you read these two conflicting signals?
**RD:** They’re not mutually exclusive. It was a national security memorandum; you could argue that part of its purpose was to define the terms of U.S. investment in China and Chinese investment in the United States. The administration is saying that U.S. investment should be prohibited from potentially many more sectors in China than the current three. And, conversely, there was discussion of what kind of Chinese investment would be sensitive for the United States.
I will note, however, that this national security memorandum hasn’t been codified by Congress. It isn’t a statute. It isn’t even necessarily an executive order. I see it as messaging of where the Trump administration wants to go, rather than specifically what the Trump administration will do.
And on your question of can there still be Chinese inbound investment—well, that’s the question of the deal. China wants to offer that. The United States wants to accept it. But the question is: How do we firewall it so it advances American economic and national security interests?
**RA:** There are stark differences between the Biden and Trump administrations on Ukraine, alliances, and the climate crisis, to name a few examples. But how would you define the key differences on their approaches to China?
**RD:** If you look at the first Trump campaign and administration, you saw an increasingly bipartisan consensus that China was a challenge, and the United States needs to adapt to a more competitive approach. Now the question is whether that bipartisan consensus will endure because Trump, although he—maybe inadvertently—helped create it, is sort of outside that bipartisan consensus. He has a penchant for dealmaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He’s willing to compromise on issues that Congress would never have allowed President Joe Biden to compromise on. But if it’s Trump, it’s no problem. And so that is a big stressor on the bipartisan consensus. I recently had the chance to testify before the House Homeland Security Committee and the House Financial Services Committee. And I learned something from that. Democrats were using much more hawkish language on China, concerned that perhaps Republicans are abandoning the bipartisan consensus and allowing Trump to walk away from it, too.
But now, let me answer your question. The Biden approach was this trifecta of investing at home, aligning with allies and partners, and, on that basis, competing with China. And I think the question of the Trump administration is: Will you see investment at home? Or, as he announced in the speech to Congress, will you cut the CHIPS and Science Act? Will you cut infrastructure spending? Will you cut the Inflation Reduction Act? The Trump administration’s deregulatory approach might be able to increase investment, but there’s a risk that the Trump administration will decrease investment and undercut the U.S. partnerships that the Biden administration was investing in.
**RA:** As you mentioned, Trump told Congress that he wants to kill the CHIPS Act, but he also said that tariffs would bring chip companies to the United States. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) says it will now invest $100 billion in the United States. Does that indicate that Trump’s use of tariffs as a foreign-policy cudgel with China will be a successful strategy?
**RD:** Well, it’s an interesting question. It’s clear that TSMC is investing not only because of the tariff threat but also because it sees an economic upside for the company. And Taiwan might see a geopolitical upside in it, amid doubts as to American willingness to stand up for Taiwan’s security.
But to get at your fundamental question: Can tariffs work to get policy outcomes? Unquestionably. But it also depends. Tariffs are a form of coercion. When you have allies and partners, you can use multiple strategies. You can prefer consensual tools and inducements, or you can be coercive. The danger of an approach that leans too heavily in either direction is that if you’re too coercive, eventually your partners might pull away. But if you’re too consensual and not willing to bring power to bear, you may not get the outcomes you want. It’s a delicate balance.
You could criticize the Biden administration for being too consensual. I would take issue with that critique, but you could make it in good faith. I worry the Trump administration might be too coercive. It might mean short-term extractions, but in the long term, it might undercut the basis of trust and good faith upon which the liberal order, or the American alliance structure, rests.
**RA:** But how is China gaming that out in the long term? With talks of a “reverse Nixon” with Trump’s tilt toward Russia, how does Beijing see these differences between the Biden and Trump administrations’ policies?
**RD:** In 2017, Beijing clearly saw an advantage in Trump’s willingness to alienate American allies and partners, which it thought was the single biggest edge the United States had over China. China has twice the manufacturing capability of the United States. But if you combine the United States with its allies—Japan, South Korea, Europe, Canada, Mexico, maybe even India—it’s two-thirds of global manufacturing, and significantly more GDP. American military spending is two to three times China’s official number. So, China does have a lot to worry about. And China has an excess capacity problem, so it needs to export. A big chunk of those exports goes to this bloc. And if that bloc were coordinated, China would have challenges exporting. And back in 2017, Xi’s Foreign Affairs Commission director came up with a phrase—that the world is experiencing “great changes unseen in a century.” It’s a critical phrase demarcating a new era in China policy.
But here’s the fundamental point. The “great changes” is the sense that America is in decline, both because it’s been hollowed out at home and because it’s undermining its alliances abroad. And so that is why China sees opportunity in the current moment. For instance, at the Munich Security Conference, Wang Yi said Europe should be involved in a U.S.-Russia deal on Ukraine. So China is trying to widen the split between the United States and Europe. The problem with the reverse Kissinger logic is that you’re splitting the United States from Europe, on which you could argue American hegemony is founded. But you are not splitting China and Russia. That’s a bad trade.
**RA:** I was in Munich, and I saw that speech. Wang Yi also talked about multipolarity. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also mentioned this at times. What is your sense of what multipolarity means for the U.S.-China relationship?
**RD:** Well, the Chinese have been mentioning multipolarity since the end of the Cold War. This concept is essentially about a world where American power is diminishing; multipolarity is a polite euphemism for American decline. The global financial crisis indicated to China that America is weakening and multipolarity is coming. And after 2016—Brexit, Trump’s election, the surge of populism across the West—China began to believe multipolarity is irreversible.
So that takes us to the current moment. If China is confident that multipolarity is coming, and if America is reinforcing that idea as Rubio did, you can expect China to be more willing to take risks substantively and rhetorically. Just look at what the Chinese embassy said two days ago on social media: If the United States wants a trade war or any other kind of war, China is ready and will fight to the end. That kind of language is extremely unusual. But it shows that China is more resolved and more confident in its ability to weather the storm.
**RA:** Let me just push back here. The popularity of wolf warrior diplomacy seems to have declined in the last few years. Doesn’t that go against what you’ve just been saying about a China more willing to take rhetorical risks?
**RD:** The decline in wolf warrior tonality is a tactical decision. It’s not the only metric for China’s greater ambition. It’s an important one. But you’re right. In general, they’re toning it down rhetorically.
But the behavior isn’t toning down. We’ve seen huge incursions around Taiwan, breaking precedent in the last four years. Five or six years ago, you didn’t see significant fighter penetration of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. Now you see it across the center line in huge numbers. Ships around Taiwan, huge assertiveness in the South China Sea. And China’s willingness to stand with Russia and arm its invasion of Ukraine is itself a change. China was much more cautious when Russia seized Crimea and during the various exchanges in Donbas. But after 2022, that was all gone.
You also see greater declared ambition in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) text. In the last seven or eight years, there’s been a greater focus on a global Chinese military, on making the world dependent on China’s supply chains and China less dependent on the world, on seizing the next battlegrounds in technology, on redefining the norms and values of the international system to make it safer for autocracy. It’s undeniable that there’s greater activism in Chinese foreign policy. But the rhetoric, of course, is tactical.
**RA:** Let’s talk a bit more about Taiwan then. How is China gaming out an invasion of Taiwan under the Trump presidency?
**RD:** Let’s think about it in terms of incentives. China wants to be ready for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027 but is not 100 percent sure the People’s Liberation Army can pull it off. Xi knows it could be existential if he tries and fails. And if he tries, it’s likely the international economic system will never be the same, which may fundamentally undermine the desire to achieve national rejuvenation because the world could close its back on China.
But if China assumes that Trump is less willing to defend Taiwan, it increases the odds that it will take action. On balance, his statements—about how China can take Taiwan, how Taiwan is indefensible, that Taiwan should pay the United States as a protectorate—all weaken the credibility of the U.S. strategic ambiguity policy.
**RA:** Let’s underscore this. You’re saying the Trump administration’s rhetoric and policies make it a bit more likely that Xi might want to go ahead with an invasion of Taiwan?
**RD:** On balance, that’s probably true. But there are two factors that cut against a simple assessment. Firstly, China is afraid of Trump’s willingness to use force capriciously. It’s not sure how he’ll respond if backed into a corner. Secondly, the story is not over yet on Ukraine or on Taiwan. His policies could change. He could, for example, do a massive arms sale to Taiwan. So, it’s a volatile situation.
**RA:** So much of this discussion hinges on the unpredictability of Trump. He’s described as volatile or transactional. But amid that discussion, we don’t often talk enough about others in the administration who could shape policy. Who do you think will have influence on China policy in the Trump administration?
**RD:** There are three broad camps to consider. One is your conventional subscribers to the bipartisan consensus on China, the so-called China hawks. And you find them throughout the administration—Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, for instance. You find them at the State Department and at the National Security Council. The second group is the America First-restraint crowd. This is a combination of those who want to pull back mixed with MAGA. Their view is that U.S. involvement in Asia isn’t in our interest and that the biggest threat to America is not external but internal. You heard this in Munich from U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance. That tribe would ask why we are focused on China. Darren Beattie, who was briefly the top public diplomacy officer at the State Department, exemplifies that line of thinking. He was in favor of a grand bargain with China, largely for ideological reasons.
But then there’s a third tribe, who are in favor of deals with China for economic, more than ideological, reasons. And you could imagine this group includes people who are highly invested in China, like Elon Musk, or perhaps the Treasury Department’s Scott Bessent, or maybe even Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. They might focus on the art of the deal.
Trump is probably some combination of these three camps and is maybe more biased toward the second and third. But only one of the three is truly hawkish, truly averse to a deal. So it stands to reason that Trump, in this term, will be less constrained in pursuing a grand bargain with China. That could be very concerning because, depending on the terms of the deal, that bargain could fundamentally be deleterious for America’s long-term interests.
**RA:** I’ve been struck by the template many world leaders are establishing to navigate Trump. There’s background lobbying to avoid tariffs, which Canada and Mexico have done. There’s in-person flattery, which the United Kingdom and France have done. There’s a transactional approach, which India and other countries have been quite good at. We’re not seeing much of that with the Chinese, at least not publicly. If you agree, why is that the case?
**RD:** China, for multiple reasons, is not going to follow that template. It tried, in the first term. Xi brought Trump to the Forbidden City and gave him a kind of bilateral treatment that no other U.S. president has ever gotten. But there’s a sense in China that it didn’t really work.
But there’s a second factor here. Remember, Xi is an authoritarian leader of a country where it matters how he’s perceived by his party, the military, and the people. He cannot afford to lose face. This conciliatory approach might make Xi look weaker, so he’s not willing to do that. And Trump is a wild card. You never know if he’s going to disrespect other leaders. So China is not going to come to the table the way other allies are. China also feels like it’s got a little bit of wind in its sails. It’s less dependent on the U.S. market than it was in the first trade war. Militarily and technologically, China feels pretty good, so it doesn’t see the need to bend the knee yet.
**RA:** Certainly not on camera.
I want to come to your book, _The Long Game_. It was immensely influential in the Biden White House but also for broadly understanding China’s ambitions. You made the point that China seeks to eventually displace the United States as the leading superpower. There are scholars who argue that Beijing’s ambitions are actually more limited, either to regional hegemony or coexistence with the United States in the current world order. Or multipolarity, as we’ve been discussing. What is wrong, in your view, with those critiques?
**RD:** I don’t think it’s possible to look at China’s discourse on national rejuvenation—which, by the way, is a goal dating back to the very founding of the CCP—and frame it entirely in terms of Chinese standard of living or Chinese sovereignty. There’s always been more to it than that. Even Sun Yat-sen, the leader of Chinese nationalists who is revered both by the Nationalist Party and the CCP, talked about the goal of China surpassing the West.
The goal is to be number one. Look at China’s behavior. Is it really about regional hegemony? Why does China pursue global bases in Latin America? My first week on the job, one of the first things we tried to do was stop China from acquiring a deepwater port in Argentina. Why would it want a deepwater port military base there? Why in the Mediterranean? Why in the Middle East? It’s because it wants to have global-power projection capability. That’s a global desire, and it has global implications.
Look at the economic race. It’s not looking for positive-sum engagement with the rest of the world. It’s using the language of power. It wants to dominate global supply chains. It wants the world dependent on China. It doesn’t want China dependent on others. That is not a win-win economic interaction. That is the logic of power trading, of using trade and economics to gain power. It’s mercantilist logic. It does not look like modest ambition.
Look at technology. The goal is not simply to be innovative but to dominate the fourth industrial revolution. Xi is quite clear that the goal is to dominate not only for prosperity but also for relative power and status.
And then, if you look at the political agenda, and you look at the desire to convene the global south, you’ll see a template for partial hegemony. Now, no countries have the same approach to global order. It’s always a reflection of internal order. America’s approach was legalistic, with a lot of institutions. China’s approach may be quite different, involving more elite cooperation, supply chain integration, and technology. But the point is that it’s not a modest goal. If you look at how Xi talks about what he wants for the 21st century, when you look at how his thinkers talk about global competition, you cannot think that the goal is simply regional hegemony or being one of many poles. That’s clearly not how Chinese scholars are thinking about things. It’s not how Xi is talking about them. It’s not how China is behaving.
**RA:** Is it bad that China has these ambitions? Seeing it as such leads to an aggressive rhetorical climate in the United States. But in reality, of course, the United States has the very same ambitions—just look at the way this administration speaks of Greenland or the potential critical minerals deal with Ukraine. You use the word mercantilist. You could use the same word about America.
**RD:** It’s hard to disagree with your assessment of the current moment. Forget the liberal rules-based order and think about order itself. Order is a hierarchy supported by three different things: coercion, to make countries do what you want them to do; consent, to incentivize them to do so; and legitimacy, to make them think it’s right for them to do what you want them to do. The United States is undermining the consensual tool right now. It’s undermining legitimacy and relying more on coercion. And that does look a little bit more like China-led order, except for the fact that China is investing heavily in consensual tools and in legitimacy. It cultivates all three pillars. Right now, the United State is leaning more heavily on only one, and that is a risk.
But, fundamentally, I would say that when the United States more self-consciously stands for a certain set of values internationally, it creates a moral basis for its order beyond the realpolitik arguments that this prevents conflict and stabilizes the world. There’s a moral basis. And I do think that the U.S. system, for all its flaws, is more conducive to the flourishing of human freedom and liberal values around the world. So a world where China is in the lead is, to me, a world of illiberal order, where democracies don’t flourish, where elites dominate economies, where technology can suppress, not empower, humans. And so, the United States has a battle to fight at home to make sure that its internal system reflects its values. It has to then take that abroad.
But your point is very astute. The question of what America stands for is a fundamental question in the international order. And that question is now up for grabs.