Michael Brendan Dougherty of National Review Online explores the president’s approach to the communist Chinese regime.
Trump was elected in no small part because of his opposition to immigration and globalization. He asked who really benefited from these phenomena, and proposed doing something about them. China, as a Communist nation that profits remora-like from the global market that it didn’t build and doesn’t defend or respect, was prominent on his ostensible list of targets, and continued to be after he took office.
Unfortunately, the key word there is “ostensible.” As is the case on so many issues, Trump is not as tough on China as he’d like everyone to think. Yes, he initiated a U.S.–China “trade war” aimed at reining in Beijing’s economic malfeasance, but he has steadfastly refused to bring up any ancillary issues about the human-rights abuses in Xinjiang or the political abuses in Hong Kong. Yes, he signed a bill aimed at pushing back on the latter abuses after it passed Congress with overwhelming, bipartisan support, but his secretary of state has now delayed its implementation. Yes, he’s called COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and bragged about his travel ban on China. But his administration somehow let nearly half a million people through anyway, and he’s proven just as likely to praise the Chinese regime in stomach-churning terms as he is to scold it. …
… Trump’s supporters might plausibly claim that his reluctance to more forcefully attack Xi’s regime in public comes from a desire to preserve the trade deal he negotiated. They’d have a much harder time arguing that the trade deal is actually a desirable outcome for the U.S. All in all, Trump’s administration deep-sixed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have put more pressure on China. …
Carolina Journal Radio highlighted America’s adversarial relationship with China during a recent interview with Walter Lohman of the Heritage Foundation.
