The former vice president’s team argues that Donald Trump may talk tough on China, but their man will actually hold the PRC to account.
Donald Trump’s rage over the circumstances in which he now finds himself—trailing in the polls as the November election approaches; on the defensive over his handling of the pandemic— has been directed mainly at one target: the government of the People’s Republic of China. The list of grievances seems endless. Of course, one of Trump’s greatest hits is that China is to blame for COVID-19. On July 23rd, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a remarkably hawkish speech, even for him, arguing that nearly 50 years of engagement with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had been a mistake. The administration then intensified economic pressure, in ways that critics say are untethered to any recognizable long-term term strategy. On August 17, the administration announced it would further tighten restrictions on Chinese telecommunications company Huawei’s ability to buy foreign computer chips. Some two weeks earlier Trump announced that he wants to force a sale within 45 days of the U. S. operations of TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social media app. He also wants to ban We Chat, a communications app that everyone uses in China, but is used in the U. S. mainly by Chinese people talking to friends and family back home. Neither company is a national security threat. Get your unlimited Newsweek trial > A consistent Trump theme since the campaign began has been that a President Joe Biden would be soft on China, as was his boss, Barack Obama, during their eight-year administration. So you would think that Biden would be on the defensive, avoiding the topic of China as best he could. To the contrary, Biden now plans to turn a potential weakness into an opportunity. The Biden campaign will paint Trump’s China policy as reckless and ineffective, particularly on trade—delivering nothing to American workers and consumers. Trump’s red hot China rhetoric, advisers to Biden believe, gives the former vice president a chance to present himself as the grown-up in the room when it comes to the PRC. ”[Trump’s] rhetoric and the policy seem increasingly unhinged,” says an influential Biden foreign policy adviser not authorized to speak on the record. “There’s a difference between being tough and being unhinged.” In the coming weeks Biden will likely deliver a serious speech outlining his own views on the PRC. He will emphasize the need to work much more closely with allies in presenting a united front to Beijing on a range of issues, including predatory trade practices, intellectual property theft and cyber espionage. “It’s one thing to talk tough about China, which Trump has done, it’s the other to be effective in dealing with Beijing to advance our interests. We think we can do that, and we’ll lay out how,” says the senior adviser.
