It’s time for Trump to get tough on China: Public opinion would be on his side
Divided as we are, the American public nonetheless widely agrees that the Chinese Communist Party is our enemy. Poll after poll has shown that Americans understand the CCP’s hegemonic ambitions are a threat to national security. A unique cross-party coalition has even emerged in Congress to build on this public sentiment and prepare the United States for a serious confrontation with this rising totalitarian power.
President Donald Trump and his new administration, however, are more reluctant about fighting and winning a new Cold War. Take, for instance, the dovish instincts of Trump’s pick for undersecretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby. In contrast to the China hawks of the first Trump administration, Colby believes the ultimate goal for Sino-American relations should be a “balance of power”-style detente rather than real geopolitical victory. And he is only one of several so-called restrainers the Trump White House is appointing to significant policymaking roles.
While many of these appointees have not yet begun implementing major policy changes, the administration is already pursuing one major shift regarding digital competition with the CCP. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order delaying the enforcement of a law that would divest TikTok from Chinese ownership or ban access to it. Ostensibly he hopes this could be an olive branch to the CCP that he could exchange for concessions in other areas. But the president has also made public statements indicating the move is an attempt to court popularity among the many Americans who use the app, especially young voters.
This TikTok affair reveals two major problems with the Trump administration’s nascent China policy. In the first place, detente with the CCP is nowhere near as popular as the White House seems to believe. But even more fundamentally, the CCP can never be the goodwill partner Trump seems to hope to negotiate with. Over the next four years, Trump would find much more success if he abandoned this overly optimistic attitude and instead rallied the public around a plan to win this competition.
Read more in the Washington Examiner.
