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“If you look at my old speeches when I was young, very handsome,” President Trump said while announcing his “Liberation Day” tariffs last year, “I’d be on a television show. I’d be talking about how we were being ripped off.” For someone who’s been known to change his opinion from time to time, he has been remarkably consistent on this point: Other countries are swindling America, and China is the worst offender.
In an earlier era when the political class was infatuated with free trade, Mr. Trump’s concerns marked him as an extreme outlier. Since then, the country has largely come around to his way of thinking. The Biden administration doubled down on Mr. Trump’s first-term China tariffs, increasing rates even further, and imposed strict export controls on critical technologies. A House select committee issued bipartisan recommendations to drastically limit China’s access to the U.S. market.
Anti-China sentiment helped sweep Mr. Trump back into office, and he packed his second administration with prominent China hawks, most notably Vice President JD Vance; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; the Pentagon policy chief, Elbridge Colby; and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative. The assumption on the part of many Americans was that Mr. Trump would do everything in his power to sever economic ties between the two countries.
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