Could Trump go to war with China?
By Carlos Martinez
Although the Pivot to Asia was initiated by the Obama administration – when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was tasked with developing a strategy for “America’s Pacific Century” – it was the Trump presidency from 2017-21 that really turned up the dial in terms of US anti-China hostility.
Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 on a promise to protect jobs by addressing the US’s trade deficit with China: “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country and that’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.”
In power, the Trump administration launched a full-scale trade war, imposing enormous tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports. This was combined with a systematic attack on Chinese technology companies, removing Huawei from US telecoms infrastructure and attempting to prevent TikTok and WeChat from operating in the US.
Militarily, Trump ramped up the US’s presence in the South China Sea and sought to revitalise the Quad group (US, Japan, India and Australia), working towards a broad regional alliance against China.
The State Department oversaw a crackdown on Chinese students and researchers, and, with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump resorted to flagrant racism, talking repeatedly about the “kung flu” and the “China virus” – all of which fed into a horrifying rise in hate crimes against people of East Asian descent.
As such, many breathed a sigh of relief when Joe Biden was elected four years ago. Unfortunately, however, Biden has essentially maintained the anti-China strategic orientation of his predecessor, albeit without the crassly confrontational rhetoric and overt racism. Biden in many ways has been more systematic in pursuit of military and economic containment of China, particularly when it comes to building an international coalition around US strategic interests.
In September 2021, the US, Britain and Australia announced the launch of AUKUS – a nuclear pact, manifestly contravening the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and evidently designed to counter China.
Biden has hosted numerous Quad summit meetings, at which the member states have reiterated their “steadfast commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific” – that is, to preserving a status quo in which the US maintains over 300 military bases in the region, along with tens of thousands of troops, nuclear-enabled warplanes, aircraft carriers, and missile defence systems aimed at establishing nuclear first-strike capability.
The combination of the Quad and AUKUS looks suspiciously like an attempt to create an Asian NATO. Meanwhile Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 trip to Taiwan Province was the highest-level US visit to the island in quarter of a century. In 2023, Biden signed off on direct US military aid to Taiwan for the first time; a BBC headline from November 2023 noted that “the US is quietly arming Taiwan to the teeth”. This undermines the Three Joint Communiqués – which form the bedrock for US-China diplomatic relations – and is clearly aimed at inflaming tensions across the Taiwan Strait and setting up a potential hot war with China over Taiwan. A recently-leaked memo from four-star general Mike Minihan predicted war over Taiwan in 2025: “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025”.
The Biden administration has expanded Trump-era restrictions against China’s technology industry, in particular by launching a ‘chip war’ to slow down China’s progress in semiconductor production, artificial intelligence, mobile phones and more. And while the US government under Biden has set several ambitious climate goals, it has also introduced sweeping sanctions on Chinese solar materials and imposed huge tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
The unfortunate truth is that there is a consensus among Democrats and Republicans. In Biden’s words, “we’re in a competition with China to win the 21st century” – and the US must win this competition at all costs.
To what extent can we expect the situation to change under a second Trump presidency?
A deepening of economic confrontation seems more than likely. Trump has already threatened 60 percent tariffs on goods from China – a significant escalation from his last trade war, when duties reached a high of 25 percent. Meanwhile he has suggested “a 100 percent or maybe even a 200 percent tariff” on Chinese carmakers.
While the US and China have made some progress working together on environmental issues in the last year, this will presumably be wiped out, given Trump’s disdain both for cooperation with China and for climate action.
In terms of military strategy, the picture is less clear. His rhetoric opposing the US’s “forever wars” likely helped his campaign, but its promise may well not be realised given the increasingly loud war drums beating in Washington.
Inasmuch as Donald Trump has a coherent analysis of international relations, he is perhaps closest to the “realist” concept that the US should make an ally out of Russia in order to prepare for confrontation with China. That ship has of course sailed, but nonetheless the US will likely shift emphasis and resources away from Russia and towards China.
The appointment of inveterate China hawks Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz as secretary of state and national security adviser sends a clear signal that Trump is planning to escalate hostilities. Marco Rubio is an anti-China fanatic, who stands for more tariffs, more sanctions, more slander, more support for Taiwanese separatism, more provocations in the South China Sea, and more destabilisation in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Mike Waltz has long pushed for closer military cooperation with India, Japan, Australia and other countries in the region in preparation for war against China.
In his message of congratulations on Trump’s election, Chinese President Xi Jinping opined that “a stable, sound and sustainable China-US relationship serves the two countries’ shared interests and meets the aspiration of the international community”. In other words, an offer recognising there is a need for international co-operation to tackle the urgent issues facing humanity, including climate change, pandemics, peace, nuclear proliferation, food security and development.
Accepting such an offer would mean a drastic change of path for the US and its allies, including Britain which, under Starmer as much as Sunak, hews perilously close to US positions. It would mean accepting humanity’s trajectory towards a multipolar future; it would mean prioritising the planet and its people over hegemonic ambitions; it would mean giving up on the Project for a New American Century.
Imperialist ruling classes will not walk that road of their own accord. Mass movements must force them to do so.
- Carlos Martinez is a long-term anti-war campaigner and artist, who writes regularly on US-China relations. You can follow him on X.
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