No matter who wins the US presidential elections in November, the United States will likely continue a more confrontative China policy launched under Trump in 2017. A second Trump administration, however, would likely mean an end to the Biden-era “guardrails” against escalation. It would also make it much harder for Europe to assert its own interests and conduct an independent China policy.
To date, China policy has played a relatively minor role in the 2024 election campaign. This is due to two reasons, one of which is obvious and not unique to this cycle: compared to domestic hot-button issues – the future of American democracy, immigration, inflation and reproductive rights – foreign policy simply does not weigh as much on voters’ minds. The second reason is that China policy is an issue on which both parties and their leading candidates are now closely aligned, and which is accordingly less useful for mobilizing support in an otherwise divided electorate.
As a late entrant to the campaign season, vice president Kamala Harris has not even staked out a China policy position of her own. In her acceptance speech, she only made a generic reference to the topic, and has otherwise signaled continuity with the Biden administration. Joe Biden, for his part, had in many ways already continued the China policy formulated by his predecessor: labeling China a strategic competitor, levying increased tariffs on its exports to the US, restricting its access to high-end technologies, and urging allies to toughen their own stances towards Beijing. Where Biden differs from Trump is in his approach of “managing competition”, putting in place “guardrails” to avoid constant escalation, and preserving some cooperative aspects on issues of mutual concern such as climate change and AI governance. Harris’ few available personal statements on China have stuck to the same talking points, suggesting this will also be her approach if elected. However, these attempts at conciliation amid confrontation are increasingly difficult to justify in the US political climate, in which the vast majority of voters view China unfavorably and both major parties are vying to prove their toughness vis-à-vis Beijing. As a result, no matter who wins, the US is likely to continue the general, more confrontational China policy launched under Donald Trump in 2017, with some differences emerging in policy minutiae and rhetorical style. For Europe and others, this means having to navigate an international environment marked by intensifying distrust and tensions between Washington and Beijing, and bearing increased pressure to pick a side. For several reasons, however, these challenges are likely to be more pronounced under a Trump administration, which this article will focus on.
Trump’s 2024 China Policy: Decoupling and Othering
As in his first term, the main focus of Trump’s 2024 China policy would be on trade issues, specifically tackling the ever-growing US trade deficit and re-shoring manufacturing jobs. To achieve this, he has proposed revoking China’s most-favored nation status and imposing tariffs of at least 60% on all imports from China. This would render many economic exchanges non-viable and thus also contribute to a broader decoupling from China that the Trump campaign is pursuing for strategic reasons. In addition, he has called for more targeted restrictions on critical imports and FDI into China (which are more in line with recent European attempts to achieve “de-risking”). As part of his anti-immigration stance, Trump has also cast the recent surge of Chinese migration to the US as a political risk, and vowed to restart a first-term initiative to investigate high-skilled Chinese workers in the US for suspected espionage. Politically, Donald Trump and Republican leaders in congress have cast China as the biggest overseas threat to American security and prosperity. For the Trump-era Republican Party, China is an “other” almost to the same extent as its domestic opponents, and its internal political dynamics dictate a continuous escalation in rhetoric and policy proposals. The Biden-era “guardrails” are unlikely to survive such a shift.
This is also borne out by the policy proposals that have emanated from Trump-aligned advisers and think tank experts: the “Project 2025” manifesto, intended to serve as a blueprint for a new Trump administration, describes China as the “greatest threat to US interests”, a “tyrannical country” whose ruling party is “at war” with the United States. In a recent op-ed, former Trump deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher, the outgoing chair of the House Select Committee on China, articulated a Cold War-inspired strategy with the dual aim of undermining the CCP’s rule over China and thwarting its ambitions to reshape the international system. Similarly, Trump’s last national security adviser Robert O’Brien has called for an end to seeking cooperation with Beijing, and instead suggested a forced economic decoupling through punitive tariffs and an intensified military containment in East Asia.
In both style and substance, such a policy would entrench Chinese perceptions of the US as an unrelenting foe unwilling to accept a rising China in a multipolar system, or its authoritarian system of domestic governance. In response, China is likely to continue the practice of breaking off bilateral talks that serve as “guardrails” and important coordination on global governance issues, as it has done on climate and more recently on arms control. Previous US-China tensions under the Trump administration also led to a steep decline in military contacts that are an important backstop to the inadvertent escalation of military incidents. While China is clearly the weaker side in this relationship, it has ways to retaliate that would leave the world poorer, less safe and harder to govern.
Due to their diplomatic sensitivity, Chinese debates on the US election have been tightly controlled and have not revealed a clear preference, mostly rehashing a set of arguments familiar from the first Trump presidency: while he might take a tougher course on China, he would be much less effective in marshalling US allies to do the same. At the same time, his isolationist instincts and hostility to international organizations would once again open up spaces for Beijing in which it can offer alternative leadership and claim the mantle of a responsible power. The basic tradeoff is higher short-term risks for greater long-term opportunities – a calculus which China has eagerly accepted elsewhere in its foreign policy, most notably its infrastructure investments under the Belt and Road Initiative.
Tough Choices ahead for the EU
For the EU, the consequences of a Trump victory are unambiguously problematic. Among the many predictable irritants in relations with another Trump administration, China policy would not be the most serious, but there are at least three reasons for concern:
First, an expansion of the current US trade restrictions on China would put additional pressure on EU businesses operating in both overseas markets. Particularly in the technology sector, the US campaign to constrain China’s access to technologies with a possible military use has already implicated EU companies occupying strategic positions, like the Dutch semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML. The pressure to restrict high-tech exports to China would intensify further under a Trump administration that views Europe as another economic competitor with little regard for its interests or desire to avoid a tough choice between its US and China trade ties.
Second, a stronger US focus on confronting China is already a cause for alarm for Europeans that fear Washington might downgrade or abandon its commitments to NATO. But alternatively, Europe’s security dependence on the US could also be leveraged to demand concessions in support of the US in its confrontation with China. Trump is known to take a highly transactional view to US security provision, and could, for example, demand that NATO should prove its worth through greater involvement in the Indo-Pacific theatre, or making it a platform for a joint, US-led containment against China. The cost of saving NATO in a second Trump term may well be an even greater European dependence on the US and decreasing ability to set its own China policy or mediate between the superpowers.
Third, there are several flashpoints in East Asia where a mismanagement of US-China tensions could escalate into a direct military confrontation: the most obvious is Taiwan, which has been exposed to a constant barrage of Chinese military exercises since 2022, but also the standoff between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea. If a Trump administration decides to pursue its confrontation with China without any Biden-era “guardrails”, it would be much harder to control an inadvertent escalation in these hotspots. Such a crisis would seriously impact European supply lines and might trigger the imposition of costly sanctions against China.
In short, another Trump term would make it much harder for the EU to assert its own interests and conduct an independent China policy. It would face an increased risk of being drawn into an escalating confrontation between the superpowers withouthaving the agency to help defuse it. If Trump returns, China relations weill be another area where Europe’s failure to plan ahead for this contingency and achieve a genuine “strategic autonomy” will have serious consequences.