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Eighty years ago, General George C. Marshall, head of the victorious US Army, had a new mission. Marshall was to establish US-China policy for what President Truman called “this new and unexplored era ahead.” The president’s priority was the end of China’s civil war, which had broken out more than twenty years before, and he offered targeted political, economic, and military assistance to support the objective of peace between Communist and Nationalist forces. The instructions were clear, although the special envoy would not succeed. In the decades that followed, successive US presidents have delivered different but nonetheless also clear strategic visions of how the United States should approach China, ranging from containment to engagement—until now.
China policy in President Donald Trump’s second term defies easy explanation.
President Trump has accused Chinese leader Xi Jinping of conspiring with Russia and North Korea against the United States, while also saying he has a very good relationship with Xi. The president moved to revoke visas for Chinese students, but then called for 600,000 Chinese student visas to be issued. His administration imposed export controls on advanced artificial-intelligence chips to China, only to lift them four months later.
Unlike in past administrations, even Trump’s own first term, there is no coherent, clearly articulated strategy. Instead, China policy has become a byproduct of Trump’s “America First” agenda. But that agenda produces conflicting imperatives when applied to China.
Reduced US commitments abroad and a global tariff war strengthen China’s hand, while initiatives that should bolster American power, such as US technological predominance and Indo-Pacific security, are being sabotaged by “America First” priorities to reduce the role of government and cooperation with allies. Without a clear framework for managing the relationship, “America First” pulls US policy in contradictory directions, making it harder to set and adequately resource priorities and undermining the United States’ long-term strategic interests.
Gone is the hegemon
A defining feature of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy is its narrow vision of US leadership. Previous administrations embraced America’s role as a “magnanimous hegemon”—a nation whose enlightened self-interest created and sustained the international order and reaped immense benefits in return. As Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan has described, America “received 40 cents for every dollar generated in the system” that it created.
Trump, in contrast, views alliances and international institutions as costly distractions. He has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement, UNESCO, and the World Health Organization. He has also shuttered USAID and hollowed out the State Department, arguably the two agencies most critical for projecting US global influence.
These measures let China position itself as the more reliable international power and to advance its own political and economic interests through initiatives such as the Belt and Road, expanded influence in the United Nations, and leadership in multilateral organizations such as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). At the September 2025 SCO meeting, for example, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed an array of new cooperative technology investment ventures that China would lead in partnership with the SCO members, including in artificial intelligence, clean energy, and the digital economy—all areas where the United States is no longer working with partners to advance a global agenda.
The Trump administration’s narrow vision of US leadership also extends to its rejection of an ideology-driven foreign policy. It moved to eliminate the US Agency for Global Media, the parent organization of the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which provide access to independent news to Chinese citizens and others. The State Department slashed democracy and human rights programs and, at the direction of the White House, stopped reporting on restrictions on free assembly, unfair elections, and harassment of human rights organization—omissions that benefit only China and other authoritarian states.
Finally, Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the UN Human Rights Council signaled that Washington would no longer compete with Beijing on political values or governance models.
Technology and other kinds of power
The “America First” trade agenda has also backfired. The White House’s “one size fits all” approach to negotiations—levying tariffs and threatening loss of access to the US market—failed when applied to China.
The Trump administration grossly misjudged both its leverage and Xi’s willingness to be seen as yielding to US pressure.
Since Trump’s first term, China has reduced reliance in critical sectors such as agriculture, energy, and technology. The United States’ share of China trade has fallen from roughly 16 percent in 2016 to 10 percent in 2023. At the same time, the United States has remained singularly dependent on China for core economic inputs such as rare earth elements, which are essential to technology and defense industries. When China imposed export controls on several rare earth elements, the White House quickly backpedaled. It lifted restrictions on US tech exports, discouraged Taiwan’s president from even a routine US transit, and refrained from punishing China for purchasing Russian oil, even while sanctioning India, a close US security partner, for the same practice.
The administration’s drive to lead the world in technology and advance the US AI tech stack globally should position the United States to compete directly with China and its global technology infrastructure play, the Digital Silk Road. The White House’s AI action plan specifically identifies China as the United States’ technological rival and advocates taking steps to counter it. The administration’s top AI official, David Sacks, has stated: “We have to remain paranoid about China. . . . We don’t want China to catch up.” His approach is straightforward: promote US tech exports with only limited restrictions everywhere but China, while placing strict export controls on leading-edge US AI products and chips to China.
But Trump has undercut this strategy by reversing his own export restrictions, which led much of the national security community to condemn the administration.
Moreover, the administration has pursued several policies that erode the very foundation of the United States’ long-term technological competitiveness: proposed cuts of as much as 56 percent to the National Science Foundation, NASA, DOE, and the National Institutes of Health, freezing as much as $11 billion in university research funding, and raising the cost to US companies for employing foreign experts.
On security, the administration has ranked the Indo-Pacific second only to the border as a national security priority. At the Shangri-la Dialogue in May 2025, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth warned that “China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia” and that any attempt to change the status quo in the South China Sea or the first island chain would be unacceptable. The Pentagon’s stake in the rare earth mining and processing company MP Materials is also an important step in reducing reliance on China for core inputs into defense manufacturing. These signals, however, are overwhelmed by White House threats to curtail allied security guarantees unless partners pay more, steep tariffs on close allies—even those such as the UK and Australia that maintain no trade surplus with the United States—and the president’s ambiguous commitment to the security of Taiwan. Threats to withdraw from the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact further cast doubt on the strength of the US commitment to Indo-Pacific security.
Finally, the Pentagon’s warning to European defense partners to stay out of the Indo-Pacific is an own goal that only increases the cost Washington, itself, must pay to maintain regional security.
Searching for coherence
Despite the administration’s tough rhetoric on China, the operating model and the policies that flow from Trump’s “America First” vision often accelerate China’s rise to global dominance at the expense of the United States. By pulling out of global institutions, Trump leaves space for China to shape rules and expand its influence. Tariff wars negatively impact allies more than China and raise doubts about US economic leadership. And devaluing democracy squanders one of America’s strongest competitive advantages.
Most damaging, the administration lacks a coherent China strategy. It pursues economic, security, and diplomatic initiatives in silos without integration or foresight. This constrains its ability to make smart tradeoffs, capitalize on synergies, and anticipate second-order consequences. Hollowing out US diplomatic agencies and democracy advocacy efforts, for example, erodes not only America’s ability to counter Beijing’s political model but also the United States’ ability to advance its tech stack globally.
Trump’s transactional style of dealmaking is a poor match for China’s long-term planning.
In his zeal to get a trade deal, Trump undercut his own national security and technology priorities. He granted Chinese companies access to the export-controlled chips and chip design software they desperately desired; avoided penalizing China for its purchase of Russian oil; and sidelined a close partner, Taiwan, to keep favor with Beijing—all without winning similar concessions. Even promising initiatives—like the Trump administration’s investments in rare earths—remain fragmented and unmoored from a larger plan.
Ultimately, while Trump’s “America First” approach may deliver some tactical victories, it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of great-power competition in the twenty-first century.
America’s ability to outcompete China necessitates a clear vision, coherent strategy, and willingness to invest human and financial capital in ways that prioritize long-term strategic gains over near-term tactical wins. Moreover, influence is built through sustained engagement and the ability to offer partners a compelling vision of shared prosperity and community.
Trump’s “America First” is, in practice, America alone—and America alone cannot win.
Elizabeth Economy is the Hargrove Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Named by Politico as among “the ten names that matter in China policy,” Economy served as senior adviser for China in the US Department of Commerce in 2021–23 and is the author of several influential books on the Chinese politics and policy, most recently The World According to China.