U.S.-China Relations In The Years Ahead: The Trade War Is A Sideshow

US-China Relations In The Years Ahead: The Trade War Is A Sideshow

Authored by Michael Krieger 

As President Trump has said many times, we rebuilt China over the past 25 years. No truer words were spoken, but those days are over.

The United States now recognizes China as a strategic and economic rival.

– Vice President Mike Pence during a speech last week at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

The truth is that China is a strategic competitor at best that uses coercion and corruption as its tools of statecraft. (Applause.) 

We’ve reconvened “the Quad” – the security talks between Japan, Australia, India and the Untied States that had been dormant for nine years. This will prove very important in the efforts ahead, ensuring that China retains only its proper place in the world.

– Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a speech last week to the Heritage Foundation

I don’t take the U.S.-China trade war seriously, because I don’t expect a transformative deal to come of it. Specifically, I see the current trade charade as little more than a warmup to a far more serious, unpredictable and dangerous conflict between the U.S. and China in the years ahead.

Last December, in a piece titled Is U.S. Geopolitical Strategy Experiencing a Monumental Shift?, I explained how the U.S. was repositioning its foreign policy to focus on China, and how this would set off a long-lasting and enormously consequential feud between the dominant empire and the emerging power. The post concluded with the following thought:

I’ve now seen enough to seriously consider that we may be entering an entirely new geopolitical environment dominated by vastly increased tensions between the U.S. and China. If so, it will likely last a lot longer than you think as leaders in both China in the U.S. will be looking for a scapegoat as their crony, financialized economies struggle under unpayable debt and unimaginable levels of corruption.

First, I think Trump and his administration genuinely mean it when it comes to their desire to get China under control and stymie its geopolitical and economic rise. This has been clear from the very beginning, and continues to be expressed by top administration officials including by Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo in a set of speeches last week (here and here), which I encourage everyone to analyze independently.

In his speech, Pence harshly attacked virtually every aspect of Chinese society and referred to it an “authoritarian regime” on multiple occasions. This isn’t the sort of language U.S. officials tend to use when a breakthrough deal with a foreign nation is imminent, it’s the sort of language U.S. officials use when the country is at war, about to be at war, or is working on a regime change operation.