If the old Washington, D.C., adage that “personnel is policy” applies, Chinese President Xi Jinping has his work cut out for him over the next four years.
It didn’t take long after the 2024 presidential election for President-elect Donald Trump to begin vetting candidates for his second administration. While thousands of low- and mid-ranking jobs are still open, Trump has already assembled the core of his senior national security team. Marco Rubio, the senior senator from Florida who ran against Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, is his pick for secretary of state. Michael Waltz, a special forces veteran and congressman from Florida, was tapped to be national security adviser. Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman representing part of upstate New York, is preparing to set up shop at the United Nations as America’s permanent representative. And Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s former trade representative, will likely join the second Trump administration in some senior capacity.
All four of them are considered China hawks. And depending on how much leeway Trump gives them, all four will have the power to push U.S. policy on China in a direction that, if taken to the extreme, will not only limit any diplomatic openings with the Asian superpower but potentially increase the prospect of a conflict between the world’s two largest economies.
If he’s offered a senior role, Lighthizer, a respected trade lawyer with decent contacts on Capitol Hill, will stick with the economic aspect of the China challenge. Much like Trump, Lighthizer is a fan of tariffs and an architect of the Trump administration’s trade war with Beijing during the first term, which hiked duties on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese products in an attempt to pressure China into a new trade agreement. In 2020, the U.S. and China finally signed a new deal requiring Beijing to import another $200 billion in U.S. goods. China didn’t live up to the terms.
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