What would a second Trump presidency bring for China?
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Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode I'll be talking to journalists, experts and long-time China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more. There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well. How do the Chinese see these issues?

The American election is still a few months away, but it's very possible that Donald Trump will be returning to the White House for a second term. What would that mean for China? This episode of Chinese Whispers is slightly different in the sense that we're not looking at what's going on inside China or what happened in China in the past, but talking about what will happen to US-China relations should Donald Trump come back to the White House.

I'm going to be talking about this particularly through the lens of his advisors and the man himself, his own views, or as much as we can garner anyway. Joining me on the episode today is Freddie Gray, who's our deputy editor and host of The Spectator's very brilliant Americano podcast, as well as Jordan McGillis, who is an adjunct fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute and who writes for the Manhattan Institute's City Journal as well. So Freddie and Jordan, welcome to Chinese Whispers.

Freddie, can we start by taking a look at Trump's first term? Was he the kind of boss that listened to his advisors? No. And I think like a lot of very successful men, Donald Trump likes playing his underlings off against each other, and particularly on foreign policy.

And he has a sort of intuitive sense of the currents of thinking on the right in America when it comes to foreign policy. He kind of understands instinctively about neocons. But if you saw in his first administration, you saw him sort of playing off the more kind of American first tradition against the neoconservatives. And I think a good example of this was appointing John Bolton as

as his national security advisor, which was a pretty stunning move, actually. Why is that? Well, I think a lot of people knew that it would end badly because the Trump tradition is much more comfortable with, you know, the sort of the politics of J.D. Vance and so on, more of what people call it isolationist, you could call it realist, that sort of thing. John Bolton is a full-on hawk and always has been.

And I think Trump talked about how he likes to keep people guessing. You know, he likes to people to sort of battle against each other. And he gets to be the CEO, the chief executive who decides. Yeah. Going back to the first time, though, who were the main characters on China other than John Bolton, for example? Well, Mike Pompeo is probably the most important figure. And he is more he's also from that neoconservative tradition. But he was probably from the well, I suppose Bolton is similar to Bolton. He's from the sort of harder wing of it.

which is the American primacy over globalism, I suppose you'd put it that way. It's America gets to assert itself abroad because it is the preeminent power. And he is a big evangelical Christian, which I think ties into a lot of his thinking about these things. And he's very, very tough. He was pretty tough on China, probably tougher than Trump was. Trump was always making very...

generous noises towards the Chinese. He loves Xi Jinping. Yeah, talking about how much he likes them and so on. You know, that's obviously Trump tactics going on there. But Pompeo pursued an almost Kennan-like kind of policy of isolating China, or tried to. And I think some people think he was pretty successful at it. Now, Jordan, you've written a pretty good piece looking ahead at the next term in

if Trump were to win again, and you've split them into three camps. I mean, I think it's fair to say that all the three of the camps are tough on China, but it seems for different reasons and different motivations. Can you give us an overview? That's certainly the case that there are different reasons that are leading to a lot of similarities, but there are clearly some nuanced disagreements. First, I want to echo what Freddie said regarding Mike Pompeo. He does have a

a conception of the United States and its place in the world that does seem to be influenced by his religious outlook. And he places a lot of importance on religious freedom in other countries. So you'll see Pompeo and others from his wing of the Republican Party who will emphasize Xinjiang, for example. Trump is less likely to emphasize that sort of disagreement we have with China in our interactions. But yes, you have the Pompeo wing, which I describe as the freedom fighters,

And I think there's both words there are significant. One, the freedom aspect. They're very they prioritize religious freedom, economic freedom, political freedom in their communication. And they emphasize that the U.S. is a power that has values that the world needs.

is attracted to and that we should put at the forefront of our diplomacy and our foreign policy. They're also fighters, however, and they take a very martial tone and want increased US defense spending, want to have a posture toward China and toward Russia, I'll add, that is very much girded by hard strength, the power of the US military.

I think the two other camps reflect Trump's inclinations a bit more, but it doesn't mean they'll have more influence necessarily. The other two camps that I laid out in my piece for City Journal are what I call the disentanglers. And the arch disentangler is J.D. Vance, who is now Donald Trump's vice presidential candidate.

and a few lesser figures as well. But the disentanglers, they tie their outlook to the US, the early republic in which we were less

oriented toward Europe, less oriented toward Asia, had this period mythologically we call splendid isolationism. They want the U.S. to have fewer ties that are binding us in defense and also trade in many ways. And then the third camp, I refer to them as the conservative realists. Other people call them the prioritizers. But this camp wants to focus U.S. foreign policy on China to the exclusion of China

other theaters and regions of the world. So the prioritizers will downplay the threat that Russia poses to Europe and emphasize that the U.S. needs to focus its attention on China and the Indo-Pacific world for the main reason that they view that region as the most economically dynamic and as the future of the 21st century. This prioritizer or conservative realist camp, I think it

can be linked back to the Hamiltonian tradition. Alexander Hamilton was our first treasury secretary. He was a close confidant of President George Washington. He viewed the country as a commercial republic, that we needed to be engaged with the world and that upholding our prosperity through the strength of arms was the key to U.S. foreign policy.

Freddie, you recently interviewed Albert Colby on the Americano podcast, also from The Spectator. And of course, you've interviewed people like Tucker Carlson before, who Jordan also mentions in his piece as one of the three camps. What do you think of this breakdown? I think Jordan's piece is brilliant. And I recommend all viewers and listeners to read it because I think it's very good commentary.

analytical way of looking at this. I mean, obviously, you know, in anything like this, you're going to be sort of dividing up things that overlap a lot. And there is overlap, as I'm sure Jordan will acknowledge, between the disentanglers and the realists and also the primacists and some of the disentanglers. So it's a messy picture.

But as for Elbridge Colby, I thought he was very interesting, very compelling. I note that I've spoken to some British politicians who hate him. Oh, OK. I don't think that's putting it too mildly. Really? Because he's very dovish on Ukraine politics.

and very critical of the British foreign policy establishment and their role in kind of... He was quite critical of David Cameron, actually, when he came on your podcast as well. So I guess that love was not lost. If I may jump in, Elbridge Colby is quite complimentary, however, of David Lammy. Oh, interesting. Well, because Lammy's been buttering him up. And so this is another interesting thing that

Colby, you know, Labour's kind of wooing of the advance and Elbridge Colby and sort of quite canny kind of approaches towards people who might be in a future Trump administration. That'd be very interesting, particularly with China and how Britain...

acts towards China in relation to what America's doing towards China will be interesting too. I really want to get into that kind of like where a Trump presidency leads its role with European allies later in the podcast. Jordan, you wrote in your piece about the formative geopolitical event for some of these people, you know, whether it was a Cold War or the war on terror. And actually, I think there's something there. Could you elaborate on that and why it's instructive in understanding their worldviews? Certainly, I don't want to overstate this point. But I think that there is

a discrepancy within the wider Republican coalition in the US between an older cohort that was informed by the Cold War experience and a younger cohort that's been most informed by our failures in the Middle East. J.D. Vance perfectly, again, encapsulates this younger view. He is the youngest member of the Senate. He's not yet... Actually, he's the second youngest member of the Senate, but he's the youngest Republican in the Senate. He's not yet 40 years old. He served in the Marines in Iraq

And almost all of his commentary on foreign affairs ties to that experience he had of the leadership, the elites in the country failing his generation. A lot of his friends and fellow Marines died in Iraq, whereas the older Republicans died.

they view the US as a power that can be much more efficacious as we were in the 1980s. And they'll point to our success in the Middle East. So for example, in the first Gulf War that was led by President George H.W. Bush,

The second youngest Republican senator is Katie Britt. I don't really know her foreign outlook very well. But then you also have Josh Hawley, who's just 44 years old. And Hawley, similar to Vance, wants to focus on narrow priorities. Let's focus on the things that are most important. And they agree it would be the Indo-Pacific region. They want to de-emphasize Europe, de-emphasize

the Middle East to a somewhat lesser degree. And then as you look at the older members of the Senate, they do tend to be, Mitch McConnell will be the key example there. They tend to feel a lot more of a kinship with Europe. They have this recollection of our countries working together to face down the Soviet Union. This can be overstated, and I'm oversimplifying a bit. There are certainly younger senators that are Republicans. Mark Wayne Mullen is a big supporter of Ukraine right now. But I think there is an age gap

between younger and older Republicans. Fred, do we know who's up and who's down? I mean, Vance is the only one that's confirmed, perhaps, in terms of all the names that we talked about. Well, I think, very interestingly, Secretary of State, of course, will be the big role, particularly vis-a-vis China. And the names that are being mentioned quite a lot are Doug Burgum and Marco Rubio as a sort of consolation prize for missing out on the vice presidential nomination. Rubio, I think, would be very much in the kind of Pompeo mould,

In terms of his original thinking, he's become more Trumpist in domestic stuff, I think. But I would say he would be more in the Rubio than the Vance mold, although he's quite good at adapting to whichever way the political wind is blowing. But certainly the people who like him, I think, would be kind of donors, Republican donors who would like Pompeo, who would like the kind of the hawkish...

prime assist approach to establishing American power in Asia. This is a very ignorant question, but what is the different roles that Secretary of State versus Vice President versus, let's say, National Security Advisor play on foreign policy? Well, Secretary of State is like the Foreign Secretary, if you like, dealing with America and the world, the world itself.

And vice president doesn't really have traditionally doesn't really have any foreign policy role, but has increasingly come to take one on a sort of deputy president in some ways. Joe Biden was very keen to be this. And I think Kamala Harris has done a little bit of it, often disastrously. But we're brushing over that at the moment. But yes, traditionally, the vice president's not not kind of foreign policy operator in the normal sense.

But then obviously, mostly power resides with the commander in chief, which is why, you know, much as it's interesting to speculate about what a secretary of state might do and so on. I think generally the decision usually rests with the commander in chief, although you might make an exception with Biden because it does seem to be particularly in the Middle East and with China, actually, to a certain extent, that Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan have been making quite important decisions and Biden has agreed with them possibly or just gone along with them.

Yeah, I mean, Biden's own personal situation maybe means that he's delegated some of those tasks. Doesn't know what's happening. I certainly concur with that. I think Jake Sullivan is probably the most pivotal figure in the White House right now. And he's in the role of the National Security Advisor, which does have more influence historically than the vice president, certainly, and even more than the Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense.

And the national security advisor for the latter portion of the first Trump administration was Robert C. O'Brien. And he is still a key figure. He is still in Trump's good graces. He's also a member of good standing of the Washington establishment. He's been able to bridge those two worlds fairly well.

I consider him to be a freedom fighter or a primacist, but he's very much trying to bridge the worlds of the new right, where Elbridge Colby sits a bit more, and the Mike Pompeo cold warrior types. And Jordan, let's talk about the commander in chief himself then. You mentioned earlier that you think perhaps Trump overlaps a bit more with the disentanglers and the conservative realists. Can you expand on that? It's interesting that we can have so much of this conversation without talking about what Trump himself has said. But

That's because he rarely paints himself into a corner. It's difficult to say exactly how he views particular foreign policy questions. He's able to dissemble, he's able to deflect questions and leave open a lot of possibilities for him in any given quandary he might find himself in. But he has recently spoken about Taiwan. And what he's said echoes what he's also said about

Europe, which is that there needs to be more burden sharing. He wants to see Taiwan show, demonstrate that it is ready and able to defend itself from China with US assistance. And that's the theme that I think is consistent through his first term, through this interregnum, and then his potential return in 2025 is that he wants US partners and allies to invest more in their own defense. He believes that our allies free ride on US defense spending, and that's a

it's largely accurate to say so. In 2018, I believe the year was, he put a lot of pressure on European allies to increase defense spending. At that time, it was something like three NATO countries other than the United States were meeting the commitment on defense spending that we've established. And now it's something like 19 countries. It's not all because of Trump. That's largely because of Vladimir Putin. But Trump was right at that time that Europe wasn't putting up enough

of its own skin in the game on defense. And he says the same things about Taiwan. Now, I do think that if you look at his economic views, that's where you can really closely tie him to the J.D. Vance New Right view, which emphasizes that the U.S. needs to regenerate a manufacturing economy. Trump wants to see jobs brought back to the United States. And that obviously does interact with

foreign and defense policy as well. In his recent interview with Bloomberg, Trump not only said that he wanted to keep close to his chest how he would handle a Taiwan crisis, he also said that Taiwan has stolen our semiconductor jobs. That's a debatable point. It's very complicated why the high end of the industry is now seated in Taiwan. But he does not view Taiwan or Ukraine or Israel in the same

charitable fashion that someone like Mike Pompeo would. Pompeo thinks that the Ukrainians, the Taiwanese and the Israelis are deserving of our special care and attention. Trump certainly does not think that.

And Trump's also quite proud of the fact that he didn't wage any wars in his presidency, Freddie, isn't he? I mean, he's a fighter, but maybe more on the economic, he's more of a businessman, like a CEO going out there trying to get the best deal and using leverage however he wants to, but not necessarily a kind of geopolitical military fighter. He's not a hardliner. That's correct. It does not take ideological views.

especially on foreign policy, but even really on economics. As Freddie said early on, he has an instinct that he thinks is on the right track with the way people on the American conservative side of the spectrum think, but he's very flexible. There were two real examples of sort of extreme brinksmanship in the Trump administration. One was with Iran, the killing of Soleimani, and that sort of moment where you thought suddenly we would...

we were just about to have a war with, America was about to have a war with Iran. But then it was really he effectively called the Iranians bluff and that sort of melted away slightly. And the other was another brilliant bit of calling bluff, which was with Kim Jong-un and North Korea, where, you know, fire and fury was the talk. Trump made some extremely aggressive sounding noises. And then before you knew it, he was meeting Kim and talking about how wonderful the real estate was on the beaches of

in North Korea. But I think he is not a hawk, and as Jordan says, he's not a hawk in any traditional sense. He's, you know, what's the famous Teddy Rousseau, speak softly and carry a big stick. That's the phrase that people like

Well, Pompeo, well, that's the phrase that people like to use. I mean, Trump believes in speaking very loudly and carrying a stick. No one will know what size the stick is because it's all kind of deception, bluff. A lot of it is, you know, this is a bit of a cliche to talk about it, but a lot of it is based on his background as a real estate developer, which is, you know, you keep the person guessing. They never know what you're doing. They never know whether you're serious or not.

That is his approach to international relations. And as has also been said a lot, like the madman approach under Richard Nixon with vis-a-vis China, it might be quite effective. Yeah. I mean, in that sense, you know, you hinted at this earlier, keeping people around him who's more hardline on China actually is probably quite helpful on average. Yes. Yeah. Well, saying, you know, I'm the nice guy. Don't leave it to my cabinet. Don't let me unleash Pompeo on you. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And Jordan, where does this leave Taiwan then? Because how seriously would Trump defend Taiwan? Or do we really literally just not know? I mean, in that Bloomberg interview that you mentioned, Trump said that the US was an insurance company, which, as you mentioned, is not really the language of the freedom fighters at all. Does it open the possibility of someone like Xi Jinping to negotiate

what China could do on Taiwan if, let's say, China gave the US some other things such as more favorable trade terms? Well, the US de facto policy on the Taiwan question has been strategic ambiguity.

Joe Biden has deviated from that on, I believe, four occasions now where he has explicitly said that the US would come to Taiwan's defense in the event of an attack on Taiwan from the PRC. It is completely unclear how Trump would respond to those sorts of scenarios. But again, that isn't a departure so much as a return to the strategic ambiguity that has ruled Washington thinking on Taiwan since 1979. And

You see his interactions with Kim Jong-un. You see the way he discusses Xi Jinping. You see the way he discusses Putin. He is a dealmaker. Certainly, the Taiwanese need to be thinking very carefully about how they will proceed. If someone like a Mike Pompeo or Robert C. O'Brien has their way, I think there would be a...

much tighter knitting of the U.S. to Taiwan. Again, those two individuals view the U.S. as the shining city on a hill that all freedom-loving people of the world want to ally with, and they're willing to extend that partnership likewise. Mike Pompeo has formally called for the U.S. to recognize Taiwan independence. So there are definitely some competing strands here in thinking on Taiwan specifically. Trump has left it completely empty

opaque as to how he would handle a direct assault or a blockade scenario or a massive cyber attack. We don't know. But what I think the Taiwanese will recognize in the same way that the Europeans have is that they need to find a way to coalesce their society around a more clear demonstration of a willingness to

defend with arms the sovereignty of the island. So that's going to mean increasing their defense spending above that 2.6% GDP number where they currently are. It's going to mean probably expanding conscription, and it's going to mean continuing to work with whoever is in the White House, certainly. And Jordan, there are other flashpoints in U.S.-China relations too, of course.

Trump and when Mike Pompeo was around, they spearheaded the trade war, which has continued under Biden, but with Biden targeting more technological industries. So what do we expect to see from a second Trump presidency if it were to come a pass when it comes to the economic containment part of things? As I said earlier, Trump is not a hardliner. He has never said that he wants to decouple entirely from China, which is what many on the political right in the US are calling for.

Trump leaves open many possibilities. You'll notice that in his recent commentary on Chinese EVs, he actually said he's open to Chinese EV production in the US. He wants more balanced trade with China. He wants a more what he would consider equitable relationship.

And you can encounter this through the writing of Robert Lighthizer, who was U.S. trade representative during the first Trump administration. Lighthizer emphasizes that this is not about completely eliminating relations with China. It's about getting a better deal for the U.S. Cliché as it sounds, as he mentioned earlier, the art of the deal seems to underlie everything that we've seen from Trump in the last eight years.

So I think that the Biden administration in many ways has been sharper toward China than the first Trump administration. It's continued with tariffs. It's instituted its own export controls. It's raised some tariffs elsewhere. I certainly don't think there will be a turning down of tariffs.

the temperature in this relationship right off the bat. But Trump wants to have some form of economic relationship with China. He does not want the hard decoupling that some others are calling for. And Fred, it was curious that actually Trump came out recently against the TikTok ban when that was really top of the news agenda. What happened there? Because he was the one who initially suggested that.

a TikTok ban at the end of his first presidency? Well, again, I'm talking only in Trump cliches, but one of the big cliches about Trump is like a cushion he wears and the impression of the last button that sat on him. And I think that's a lot to do with Jeff Yass, who is a major investor in TikTok and a donor, I believe, to the Republicans and who had a meeting with Donald Trump and impressed upon him the need not to ban TikTok, despite there was a lot of Republicans who were pushing this very hard.

And Trump sort of withdrew from that quite quickly. Quite what his thinking is, is mysterious because, you know, as president, he was going to sign, I think it was an executive order to ban TikTok. So he's changed his mind on that.

perhaps it's because he knows he himself has done pretty well out of TikTok in recent years, although with Kamala Harris doing so well this week, maybe there'll be another vote for us. We don't know. I think that there is something of real significance on this TikTok point. Again,

Again, Trump is not a conservative hardliner. He is not the kind of person who panders to the moral majority, which is a phrase that was popular during the Reagan years. Trump is popular with people who are on the fringes of society, people who are not living necessarily a traditional conservative life. And those people are on TikTok. They're young. They're having fun. They don't want to be

talk down to in the way that conservative Republicans sometimes do. Trump connects with people across the age spectrum, and I think it's reflected in his popularity on TikTok. You wouldn't see that from a candidate like a Mitt Romney in 2012 or a John McCain in 2008. Trump is a very different character who appeals to a different subset of the population. And it's politically astute of him, I think, to reject the TikTok ban idea because that's where he's going to connect directly with

the sorts of low propensity voters that might just turn out for Trump in November. And Jordan, obviously the other thing that's changed since the last time Trump was president is the war in Ukraine. We've already talked about Ukraine quite a lot on this podcast, but just spell out what you think are the implications for US-China relations. If...

Trump were to, I guess, withdraw support from Ukraine is what most people expect he would do. How exactly that would look is open to questioning, but he wouldn't have the same kind of Biden-style support for Europe when it comes to that invasion. I don't want to speak immediately about Trump here. I want to talk about the divide Republicans are reflecting on this issue. Republicans are actually attacking Biden from both sides. Some are saying he's far too invested in Ukraine, but you actually also see other Republicans saying Biden has not given Ukraine the weapons necessary

they need. Mike Pompeo is one such Republican. Again, he was Trump's Secretary of State. So this idea that Trump will immediately pull the plug on Ukraine is not obvious to me. I think there are people that do influence Trump that are suggesting we should do exactly the opposite, which is Pompeo, for example, recommended a $500 billion lend-lease program for Ukraine. That could happen. I think what Pompeo was trying to communicate is that if we

open up our funding to Ukraine and our generosity to Ukraine. It will put pressure on Vladimir Putin to bring the war to an end quickly, shepherded presumably by a President Donald Trump. I don't know if that's realistic, but it is not at all clear that Donald Trump would immediately cease all US support for Ukraine. What I think is likely is that he has a lot of confidence in himself to be able to go to Vladimir Putin directly and again, make some sort of deal. We'll see how that plays out.

It seems probable, but not by any means guaranteed that Trump will be president. So what's been fascinating is how I think you've seen the Ukrainians interact with Trump here. Vladimir Zelensky had a call with Trump and Trump was very willing to have that conversation.

Let's not overstate this claim that Trump is going to completely tie off any U.S. link. Well, yeah, the Trump-Zelensky relationship is very interesting and goes back quite far. I think just sort of broadly on Ukraine, I think what we'll see is that a Trump administration will pressure European countries to increase their military spending even more because they expect Europe to look after Europe.

Europe, while inevitably America's strategic focus, whether Trump is in line with it, with his advisors or not, America's strategic focus will turn towards China, because that's just the way the world is going. China, presumably, I mean, if I was sitting in Beijing, you know, that weakened Western unity might be quite a good thing to be looking out for. I mean, I'm not saying that China has a preferred candidate, because I think both sides are pretty tough on China for their different ways and different motivations, as we've talked about. But it's

in that specific narrow sense of Western unity, you know, Trump, the fact that in the first trade war, he was pretty tough on even European trading partners, will be an interesting moment to watch whether or not these kind of calls for multilateralism, you know, we talk about deals like AUKUS, for example, between Australia and the UK as well, you know, whether or not those allies in Japan, in the Pacific, will be thinking, oh gosh, I'm not sure I can work with Trump on here to tackle China. Well, the Chinese, I think, will,

wouldn't mind if the Ukrainian war went on forever. I mean, they'll keep getting Russian oil, they'll keep getting around sanctions, being quite useful for China in a strategic sense. I think Trump would be quick to recognise that. And I think that is a problem for China. I think that is the way in which Trump and his more direct approach on some things, his more kind of transactional approach to international relations,

is more of a problem for China than Biden was, because Biden had this sort of cooperate and challenge twin track approach, which has been harder on China in some ways. And, you know, and Biden administration now talking about how the American economy is going to outgrow China's this year. I just think that it's harder to predict with Trump because of his transactional very...

kind of business focused approach. While the Trump administration in its first go around put a lot of pressure on allies, it did not weaken relationships in the way that it's been stated. And some of the people that will surely be influential in a second Trump administration, like Elbridge Colby, who's come up a couple times,

he very much is in favor of clear statements of support for particular allies in the Indo-Pacific, including Korea, Japan, and even our quasi-ally of Taiwan. So there are portions of the potential Trump camp that are very vocal in support of defending these traditional relationships because they redound to the benefit of Americans. Jordan McGillis and Freddie Gray, thank you so much for joining Chinese Whispers.

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