Where Trump and Harris Stand on China Policies

The current approach to China began with former President Donald Trump. Identifying China as a “strategic competitor,” the Trump administration took a new approach to U.S.–China relations. It imposed broad tariffs on Chinese goods, controlled Chinese access to American semiconductor technology, and pivoted national security strategy from the Middle East to China and Russia.

The Biden administration continued many of the same policies, and Washington’s China policy will likely continue to be hawkish. However, the two candidates will also have distinct approaches, owing to their personal differences and depending on whom they appoint to key positions.

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is broadly expected to resume his China policies in the first term.

Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris has indicated no sign of divergence from the Biden administration’s China policies.

Trade

The two candidates agree on controlling strategic goods and technologies, investing in innovation, re-shoring supply chains, and combating Beijing’s unfair trade practices.

Stephen Ezell, a vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think tank, believes Trump will take the pledges in the Republican platform seriously, particularly revoking China’s permanent normal trade relations status, because Beijing has failed to comply with its commitments as a member of the World Trade Organization, he told The Epoch Times.

During the final months of his term, Trump raised the idea of separating the United States and Chinese economies, known as decoupling. His former trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, a rumored candidate for the next secretary of the Treasury, advocates the same approach.

James Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said decoupling is already happening.

As to whether a future Harris administration would differ from Biden’s approach, Lewis told The Epoch Times that he would watch the pace of decoupling and the measures adopted to reinforce it.

Security

Despite a growing consensus in Washington on the need to counter the Chinese regime’s aggressive actions, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, differences remain on how to avoid military conflicts.

Trump emphasizes maintaining peace by showing military strength. During his term, he focused on modernizing nuclear weapons and stopped the trend of cuts to the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

During a debate on the defense funding bill in 2020, then-Sen. Harris (D-Calif.) supported cutting the budget and said, “I unequivocally agree with the goal of reducing the defense budget and redirecting funding to communities in need.”

Trump started the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, which Biden continued. Both parties agree that the Indo-Pacific region is the United States’s primary theater. However, Trump and Harris may differ on the balance between the imminent dangers in the Russia–Ukraine and Israel–Hamas regional wars and the tense South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

Ivan Kanapathy, a senior vice president at advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies and former senior national security official under the Trump administration, believes the European Union, which has a much larger economy than Russia, should handle the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war while the United States should focus more on China and North Korea.

The Biden administration has maintained that the Indo-Pacific is the “priority theater” for the United States. However, military assistance to Ukraine and Israel has strained the defense industry and led to an arms sales backlog to Taiwan of about $20 billion, the same as the island’s annual defense budget.

Biden has said several times that the United States would defend Taiwan if Beijing tried to annex the island by force. However, his officials walked back those statements each time, saying U.S. policy is deliberately vague on what it would do.

Trump is also credited with forging closer U.S.–Taiwan relations, starting with his unprecedented phone conversation in 2016—the first such official call since 1960—with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who congratulated the U.S. president-elect.

In Smithton, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 23, Trump alluded to the possibility of getting into a war with China while speaking about protecting the U.S. steel industry.

“If we’re in a war—and we need army tanks, and we need ships, and we need other things that happen to be made of steel—what are we going to do? Go to China and get the steel?” he said.

“We’re fighting China, but ‘Would you mind selling us some steel?’ Think about it.”

On Sept. 1, China added seven fentanyl precursors under state control, which triggers limitations on purchases, sales, and exports.

Calling the drug a “scourge on our country,” Harris pledged last month without mentioning China, “As president, I will make it a top priority to disrupt the flow of fentanyl into the United States.”

In Smithton, Trump said that if he were reelected, he would call Xi and ask the CCP leader to give death penalties to Chinese fentanyl dealers. According to Trump, while he was in office, he had a “handshake deal” with Xi on that issue.

Alexander Gray, CEO of American Global Strategies and a former senior national security official under the Trump administration, said dialogue and discussions need to have an objective.

He told The Epoch Times that the CCP has “a well-known historical reputation for manipulating foreign interlocutors and using those types of engagements for propaganda purposes rather than having any agenda that’s constructive.”

According to Kanapathy’s observation, Biden cautiously continued his predecessor’s China policy for two years before his administration shifted to “a more accommodative posture with less emphasis on competitive actions.”

Lewis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies believes the current administration’s approach hinges upon an assessment of whether China has peaked. If it is believed that China has plateaued, he said, then U.S. policy responses can be more relaxed. If it is thought that China will continue getting stronger, then more pushback is needed, he said.

But this question is still an open debate, Lewis said, and has resulted in a “sort of gridlock in the White House under Biden on China’s strategy.”

Lewis also pointed to the consensus that Chinese officials “fudge their numbers,” saying the pace of China’s economic growth is likely half of what Beijing claims it is.

However, he said the problems might be offset by Beijing’s “willingness to spend” and its deep research bench.

China has more than 6 million personnel to support Xi’s plan to develop new technology—such as batteries and solar energy—to achieve world dominance.

Human Rights

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have been vocal critics of human rights abuses in China.

Trump signed both bills into law.

While facing criticism for publicly praising Xi, Trump has also presided over several milestones in terms of Chinese human rights.

Several Parliaments worldwide have backed such determination with non-binding votes, but Washington remains the only executive branch to do so.

The CCP perceives Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa—a spiritual practice that follows the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—as one of the top threats to its rule, along with Taiwanese independence, Tibetan independence, Xinjiang “separatists,” and the Chinese democracy movement.

Andrew Thornebrooke contributed to this report.