What is Trump’s China Policy?

Foreign Policy · Feb 20, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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What is the Trump administration’s China policy? It’s not easy to get a straight answer. Depending on who you ask, you might hear “America First,” a broad term that can be interpreted in a variety of ways; or you might hear that the ambiguity is the point, and it’s an advantage over the self-imposed red lines and policy buzzwords of the Biden era. On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Kurt Campbell, who ran Asia policy for the Biden administration and served as deputy secretary of state. Campbell and other aides of former U.S. President Joe Biden coined “invest, align, compete” as a slogan for their China plans, a strategy that included planks such as the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and a network of alliances. U.S. President Donald Trump has since unwound several of those policies. In a recent New York Times article, Campbell argued that Trump’s approach to China was “full of contradictions” but that his unpredictability had both advantages and disadvantages. Subscribers can watch our full discussion on the video box atop this page. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript. Campbell is presently chairman and co-founder of the Asia Group. Ravi Agrawal: So, what are the contradictions you see in Trump’s China policy? Kurt Campbell: Let me just start with the things that we think we know. One of the most interesting things is that President Trump clearly is attracted to authoritarians. We saw in the first term his deep attraction to [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping]. We also know that we haven’t seen a chief executive in the United States that, frankly, has this much latitude to make decisions about China unconstrained by the right wing or by Congress more generally. He has an administration that is a big tent when it comes to China: He has some of the most pro-business, “let’s cut a deal” kind of guys, along with some of the hardest of the hard-liners. And they fight it out inside the government. The biggest contradictions, however, are at the core of what President Trump seeks. In some instances, it appears that he’s seeking to build a completely different kind of relationship with China and believes that commercial deals which benefit him and the United States are the right approach. At other times, his approach suggests that this is a pause, that he’s seeking to take a timeout so we can build reserves of critical minerals and build up our own military. My sense is that this ambiguity is designed not just to keep China off balance, but frankly, to keep elements in American society guessing what President Trump’s ultimate outcomes and desires are. RA: You used the term ambiguity. And then there’s “strategic ambiguity,” a fairly wonkish term, which in the context of the U.S.-China relationship refers to an intentional uncertainty over whether Washington would help Taiwan militarily were China to attack it. You wrote recently in the New York Times that Trump “has taken strategic ambiguity to a profound new level.” What did you mean by that? KC: The idea here is that the strategic ambiguity, as it has applied to Taiwan, was: Would the United States, in a moment of crisis, come to Taiwan’s aid? The way that we’ve managed that historically is by being careful about directly saying which direction we would lean toward and also urging both sides to play it cool and to understand the benefits of continued existence of the status quo, of Taiwan’s ability to live in peace and prosperity. What I’d suggest is that this larger strategic ambiguity really comes down to: What would President Trump do if the chips were down in a larger framework in the Indo-Pacific? Would he side with China? We’ve seen some ambivalence and uncertainty in the situation, for instance, between Russia and Ukraine. Many of our allies in the Indo-Pacific want to be reassured that the United States continues to support the traditional alliance structures. That means our partnerships with Japan and South Korea and Australia and our newfound friends such as India. Behind closed doors, there is some anxiety about just where President Trump stands. One of the reasons that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, following her recent election, wants to come to Washington before President Trump goes to Beijing is to seek reassurances and to try to bolster President Trump to be firm with President Xi. I think, though, at the core, what we will likely see when President Trump goes to China in April is an exchange of wants. The president clearly wants short-term deals in agriculture; some sales; would like to end fentanyl. I think he’s contemplating the idea of major Chinese investment in the United States. The question is what does China want in return? The concerns are that China seeks complete access to our technology stack. Those are areas where we have some clear advantages, and we have to be careful to understand that this is a major global competition. China is also going to say, “Look, if we’re going to buy all this agricultural stuff, then you’re going to have to lift some of these tariffs.” We might find ourselves in a situation where the tariffs on China would be lower than for some of our close allies and partners. That’s problematic. But some recent statements from the president—ambiguous for sure, but still indications—and also the readout of a recent phone call between President Trump and President Xi suggest to me that the Chinese want to push the United States on Taiwan, get the president to move away from long-standing, bipartisan approaches, and get him to suddenly put pressure on Taiwan. We’re all watching very closely for that. RA: Kurt, there’s a lot to unpack there, and I’ll come to a lot of it, bit by bit. But just on Taiwan, I should note that President Biden sometimes broke with the practice of strategic ambiguity when he would say that the United States would defend Taiwan— KC: Not just sometimes. Almost always, actually. I think four or five times during the administration, he came right out. RA: But Kurt, the Trump administration would say that precisely because Biden appeared to be so certain about defending Taiwan, which was not strategic ambiguity, that they feel this need to overcorrect a little bit, to be less reassuring. That might be because of either burden sharing—they want other U.S. allies to spend more on defense—or they’re trying to flip some of the narrative from the Biden administration, which they would say didn’t work well enough. KC: The Trump administration is making an effort to say that the reason there might be changes in Taiwan policy, from the president on down, is because of previous governments’ actions. At the core of it is, to the extent that President Trump has a fundamental ideology, his idea that big countries should have more sway over their immediate environment. You see that as the president talks about Latin America and the idea of the Monroe Doctrine on steroids. You see it as he sometimes describes Russia and Ukraine. And I think you see that a little bit with China and Taiwan. The key to an effective diplomacy with respect to China is to make clear that we do not support Taiwan’s independence, that we believe the maintenance of this peace and stability has actually served the interests of both China and Taiwan for decades, and that a premeditated conflict initiated by Beijing would have absolutely catastrophic consequences, not just militarily, but for the global economy. That has been the abiding bipartisan belief for decades in the United States. Yes, there are nuances on both sides, but I think President Trump—we don’t know, and we’ll see as we go forward—may represent a bit of a departure in that overall approach. RA: Speaking of departures, it strikes me that between about 2016 and 2024, there was this big, bipartisan trend toward lawmakers and policymakers becoming more hawkish on China and having a more clear-eyed sense of the challenge and security threats that China represented. It seems to me now that this trend is changing, is shifting, could even be over. Do you agree with that assessment? KC: I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is over, Ravi. I think that is an exaggeration, but I believe the fundamentals of it are being challenged. That kind of challenge is actually healthy. If you look over the last 10 years, one of the only areas of bipartisan agreement can be found in the Indo-Pacific. I believe that is still the prevailing wisdom, although it’s being challenged now by a couple of different efforts. There is a commercial group that wants to cut deals and do business. That’s animated largely in the Trump administration, but you see it also in the investor class—less in manufacturing and other areas—who are still encouraged and interested in doing deals in China. There are some on the left who say that this was overdone, that we overestimated China’s negative impacts globally, and that we’ve got to give peace a chance more generally. So yes, I do believe the dominant bipartisan consensus is being questioned now, but ultimately, if you went behind closed doors on Capitol Hill and talked to most strategists, they would agree with the larger abiding principles of a bipartisan consensus that we are dealing with a China that is competitive, seeking to usurp American power, and wants to be the dominant country on the global stage for the remainder of the 21st century. RA: You mentioned some companies there, and one of them, of course, is Nvidia. I’m curious how damaging you think it is that the United States has reversed some of the restrictions on selling high-end chips to China. KC: The abiding belief among some technologists and in the Trump administration is that these restrictions don’t serve American interests, that we want to have China use even our very best chips. That if we cause them to be tied into the American tech stack, they won’t be able to diversify on their own capabilities. I think that’s just wrong. That’s a misunderstanding o