Three Potential Pitfalls of Trump’s Approach to China (opens in new tab)

Many observers argue that the first Trump administration played an important role in consolidating a bipartisan U.S. “consensus” on China, the core element of which is a judgment that Beijing is Washington’s foremost strategic competitor. Documents such as the 2017 national security strategy and speeches by prominent officials—most notably one by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in July 2020—argued that erstwhile China policy had failed, framed China in explicitly adversarial terms, and ...