U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s views on China are often considered to be erratic and unpredictable. His first presidency led to a negative shift in China-U.S. relations. On the eve of his second presidency, Trump’s attitude remains hard to gauge. His current focus is still on the trade deficit, and he plans to impose high tariffs on Chinese goods if elected. On the other hand, he has refused to confirm that he would use U.S. military force to protect Taiwan in the event of a conflict, and in fact he has recently accused Taiwan of stealing U.S. jobs in the semiconductor industry.
With conflicting signals from Trump himself, do his picks for key national security positions offer more clarity?
Trump’s National Security Picks Are Mostly China Hawks
During Trump’s second term in office, much about his approach to China will depend on his foreign policy advisers. Trump announced the picks for his national security team in mid-November. Precedent suggests that his nominees will most likely be confirmed by the Senate.
While in 2016 Trump picked individuals with a long experience in government or business, this time he has made several unconventional choices that have unsettled policy circles in Washington. His most “traditional” picks are probably Mike Waltz as national security adviser and Marco Rubio as secretary of state. Both are professional politicians and hardline conservatives with hawkish views on China.
Waltz in particular is seen as one of the biggest China hawks in Congress. He has been at the forefront of efforts to protect U.S. universities from China’s espionage efforts, for instance by directing the Department of Defense to track foreign talent recruitment programs that pose a threat to the United States.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio is also tough toward China. In 2022 he said China represents “the threat that will define this century.” In 2023 he warned that China was trying to undermine the global role of the dollar and replace it with the yuan, so as to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Russia.
Former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard, nominated by Trump as director of national intelligence, represents perhaps his most controversial choice. Gabbard has caused concern by repeating Russian talking points about the wars in Ukraine and Syria and has been accused of supporting authoritarian regimes.
Gabbard has been less vocal about China, but in 2019, when she ran in the Democratic primaries, she called for an end to Trump’s trade war with China, bemoaning its “devastating effects” on manufacturers and farmers. She also advocated for the United States to maintain a cooperative relationship with China and work together on climate change.
On this issue Gabbard is out of step, however, with the rest of Trump’s picks. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s nominee to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency has repeatedly called China the top threat to U.S. interests and the rest of the free world. Fox News presenter Pete Hegseth, whom Trump picked as secretary of defense, has claimed that China is “building an army specifically dedicated to defeating the United States of America,” as well as using its dominance in tech and manufacturing to amass global influence.
New York Representative Elise Stefanik, chosen by Trump as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has voiced warnings about Chinese espionage and infiltration, most recently in October, when she slammed China’s “blatant and malicious electoral interference” after it was reported that hackers with Chinese links had targeted Trump’s telephone.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, nominated as secretary of homeland security, has not spoken much about China. In March this year, however, she warned the U.S. House Agricultural Committee to be wary of China buying up U.S. farmland, stating that “over the years, I have witnessed this hostile communist country work to systematically take over more of America’s vital food supply chain.”
The Republican Party’s Three Foreign Policy Camps
Various attempts have been made to delineate different camps or approaches to foreign policy within the Republican Party. In 2022 the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) came up with a taxonomy that has gained widespread recognition. The council identified three foreign policy currents within the Republican Party, which it called the primacists, the restrainers and the prioritizers.
According to this classification, the primacists are those who want to maintain U.S. leadership and military presence worldwide. They want the United States to continue to focus on all theaters, including Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with the help of its local allies.
The restrainers, on the contrary, are what are often known as isolationists. They believe the U.S. should focus on its domestic problems and give up on trying to police the world.
Finally there are the prioritizers, who feel that U.S. resources are too few to enable it to maintain its leadership in all theaters. Instead, this group feels that the U.S. should focus its attention and resources on its most pressing priority: confronting China, described as a deep existential threat. Trump’s second administration is bound to include representatives of all three camps.
In What Camp Do Trump’s Advisers Fall?
Within Trump’s proposed national security team, Waltz and Rubio could easily be identified as “primacists.” Both are traditional conservatives who balance their assertiveness toward China with an equally hawkish attitude toward Russia, Iran, and other U.S. rivals. They want the United States to continue to provide support to Ukraine, offer military protection to Taiwan, and exert power and influence across the world.
Gabbard is the only member of the team who could be called a “restrainer”: she is an isolationist who is skeptical of any U.S. projection of power abroad and does not view either Russia or China as existential threats. Gabbard has made it very clear that she sees U.S. support for Ukraine as a mistake, and she will most likely be equally uninterested in providing military assistance to Taiwan or opposing China’s ambitions in the South China Sea.
Trump’s other picks tend more toward the “prioritizer” camp: They think the U.S. should focus its resources on containing China, and they are relatively uninterested in cultivating the United States’ traditional military alliances, particularly in Europe. Many of them are aligned with a growing body of opinion among Republicans that sees support for Ukraine’s war effort as an unnecessary burden for the U.S.
Hegseth has expressed skepticism of NATO, claiming that U.S. allies in Europe need to take the lead in defending themselves. Noem has called the war in Ukraine “Europe’s fight, not ours,” claiming that U.S. military aid for Ukraine is a mistake that is pushing Russia closer to China. Stefanik voted against a $60 billion aid package for Ukraine last April. Ratcliffe criticized Biden for visiting Ukraine in February 2023, calling it a “Ukraine first, Ohio last policy” (a reference to the recent train derailment in Ohio).
It is worth noting that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance is also aligned with the prioritizers; he thinks the United States is overstretching itself and cannot support conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and a potential conflict over Taiwan at the same time. He has claimed that the Europeans should “step up” and take more responsibility for their own defense, while the U.S. should put its focus squarely on containing China.
Will Trump Be Swayed?
It looks likely that Trump will be surrounded by people only too willing to get tough on China. The question is to what extent he will allow his advisers to influence his stance.
He already feels strongly that the U.S. trade relationship with China is unbalanced, and that tariffs are the best way to address this issue. He has pledged multiple times to impose tariffs on Chinese goods if he is reelected, and in February he claimed the tariffs could exceed 60 percent.
Where Trump could be more easily swayed is on security issues. When it comes to Taiwan, his position appears murky and indecisive. In June, Trump claimed that Taiwan has stolen “almost 100percent” of the U.S. chip industry. In July he claimed Taiwan should pay more for its own protection, and dodged the question of whether he would defend Taiwan in the event of a war. In October, however, Trump claimed that if China was to “go into Taiwan,” he would impose additional tariffs of 150 percent or 200 percent on Chinese goods as a reaction.
It is certainly possible that Trump could take a transactional approach to Taiwan, perhaps trying to use the island as a bargaining chip. After all, he is not beholden to any ideology or commitment to defend the international order. Trump’s advisers, however, are likely to tell him that protecting Taiwan is vital to the United States’ own interests.
The same is true for other points of geopolitical contention, for instance China’s disputed claims to the South China Sea. Trump is not a policy micro-manager, and much of his approach may depend on those who occupy the top foreign policy posts in his administration. His foreign policy team may well push him toward a more assertive stance over such issues.
It remains to be seen to what extent Trump’s own isolationist impulses, and his belief that U.S. allies should pay for their own defense, may end up prevailing over other views in his administration. It is also possible he will decide to sacrifice security considerations for the sake of a favorable trade deal. The contours of China-U.S. relations over the next four years are still very much to be determined.