Where Trump And Harris Stand On China Policies

Authored by Terri Wu and Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The next president will likely preside over one of the most consequential periods in the nation’s relations with communist China, an adversary that has the intention and capacity to displace the current U.S.-led world order.

Eight in 10 Americans view China unfavorably, according to a Pew Research Center report released in July.

Washington also has a consensus that the Chinese regime poses a threat as it closes the power gap with the United States in military, diplomatic, and technological domains.

The current approach to China began with former President Donald Trump. Identifying China as a “strategic competitor,” the Trump administration took a new approach to U.S.–China relations. It imposed broad tariffs on Chinese goods, controlled Chinese access to American semiconductor technology, and pivoted national security strategy from the Middle East to China and Russia.

The Biden administration continued many of the same policies, and Washington’s China policy will likely continue to be hawkish. However, the two candidates will also have distinct approaches, owing to their personal differences and depending on whom they appoint to key positions.

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is broadly expected to resume his China policies in the first term.

Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris has indicated no sign of divergence from the Biden administration’s China policies.

Trade

The two candidates agree on controlling strategic goods and technologies, investing in innovation, re-shoring supply chains, and combating Beijing’s unfair trade practices.

The aim is to ensure “America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century,” Harris has said repeatedly.

Last month, the Biden administration finalized its tariffs, retaining all Trump-era rates and sharply increasing them on selected critical technology and minerals.

During a speech on the economy in Pittsburgh on Sept. 25, the vice president vowed, “I will never hesitate to take swift and strong measures when China undermines the rules of the road at the expense of our workers, our communities, and our companies.”

Meanwhile, the Trump-centered Republican platform also pledges to revoke China’s permanent normal trade relations status, which grants it free trade benefits with the United States; phase out imports of essential goods that include electronics, steel, and pharmaceuticals; and stop China from buying American real estate and industries.

Trump hinted at reigniting the trade war, suggesting he may impose more than 60 percent tariffs on Chinese goods.

Dennis Wilder, a former national security and intelligence officer who held several senior roles in the Bush and Obama administrations, believes Trump’s threat of higher tariffs is merely a negotiation tool to achieve a trade deal similar to the phase one U.S.–China trade deal signed in 2020.

Stephen Ezell, a vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think tank, believes Trump will take the pledges in the Republican platform seriously, particularly revoking China’s permanent normal trade relations status, because Beijing has failed to comply with its commitments as a member of the World Trade Organization, he told The Epoch Times.

Beijing did not fulfill its pledge in the phase one deal to buy an additional $200 billion in U.S. products over two years. During a meeting with farmers in Pennsylvania’s Smithton, a city near Pittsburgh, on Sept. 23, Trump said, if reelected, his first call would be to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, asking him to honor the deal.

During the final months of his term, Trump raised the idea of separating the United States and Chinese economies, known as decoupling. His former trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, a rumored candidate for the next secretary of the Treasury, advocates the same approach.

Harris and her Democratic Party have a different view; she believes in derisking, not decoupling.

James Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said decoupling is already happening.

As to whether a future Harris administration would differ from Biden’s approach, Lewis told The Epoch Times that he would watch the pace of decoupling and the measures adopted to reinforce it.

Security

Despite a growing consensus in Washington on the need to counter the Chinese regime’s aggressive actions, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, differences remain on how to avoid military conflicts.

Trump emphasizes maintaining peace by showing military strength. During his term, he focused on modernizing nuclear weapons and stopped the trend of cuts to the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

A 2018 nuclear policy document listed that one of the roles of nuclear weapons was for “hedging against an uncertain future.” The Biden administration dropped this language in its 2022 update.

President Joe Biden’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review also canceled the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile program for cost reasons. However, Congress continued funding the program, although it was not included in the Biden administration’s defense budget requests. According to its proponents, the program enhances the credibility of U.S. deterrence.

A YouGov survey in June found that Trump supporters are more likely than Biden supporters to say America is safer because of its nuclear arsenal.

During a debate on the defense funding bill in 2020, then-Sen. Harris (D-Calif.) supported cutting the budget and said, “I unequivocally agree with the goal of reducing the defense budget and redirecting funding to communities in need.”

In May, Harris said the United States’s air and space supremacy is essential to ensuring global peace and security, and the Biden administration has kept defense spending steady.

Trump started the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, which Biden continued. Both parties agree that the Indo-Pacific region is the United States’s primary theater. However, Trump and Harris may differ on the balance between the imminent dangers in the Russia–Ukraine and Israel–Hamas regional wars and the tense South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

Ivan Kanapathy, a senior vice president at advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies and former senior national security official under the Trump administration, believes the European Union, which has a much larger economy than Russia, should handle the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war while the United States should focus more on China and North Korea.

Elbridge Colby, a former senior Pentagon official and a top contender for the national security adviser position in Trump’s second term, shares this view.

In late September, Harris reaffirmed the U.S. support for Ukraine as a way of “fulfilling our long-standing role of global leadership.” Earlier this year, in February, she touted having “ invested heavily in our alliances and partnerships and created new ones to ensure peace and security” in the Indo-Pacific during the past three and half years.

The Biden administration has maintained that the Indo-Pacific is the “priority theater” for the United States. However, military assistance to Ukraine and Israel has strained the defense industry and led to an arms sales backlog to Taiwan of about $20 billion, the same as the island’s annual defense budget.

Biden has said several times that the United States would defend Taiwan if Beijing tried to annex the island by force. However, his officials walked back those statements each time, saying U.S. policy is deliberately vague on what it would do.

In September 2022, Harris said the United States will “continue to oppose any unilateral change to the status quo” and “continue to support Taiwan’s self-defense, consistent with our long-standing policy.”

Trump has recently sparked controversy by saying Taiwan should pay the United States for its defense.

Trump is also credited with forging closer U.S.–Taiwan relations, starting with his unprecedented phone conversation in 2016—the first such official call since 1960—with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who congratulated the U.S. president-elect.

Trump signed into law the Taiwan Travel Act in 2018, which encouraged engagements between U.S. and Taiwan officials at all levels, and the Taiwan Assurance Act in 2020, which ensured alignment of Taiwan guidelines in the State Department. During his term, several current U.S. cabinet-level officials visited the island nation.

In Smithton, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 23, Trump alluded to the possibility of getting into a war with China while speaking about protecting the U.S. steel industry.

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