Trump’s China Policy: Balancing Hawks, Trade and Strategic Engagement

Donald Trump is preparing to receive Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on Wednesday, departing from decades of diplomatic protocol and underscoring the importance he places on relations with Beijing. Julian Gewirtz, a Columbia University historian and former senior China official under Joe Biden, told the Financial Times that Trump “was never the pure China hawk some people imagined.”
According to the Financial Times, this would be the first time since 1962 that a US president has welcomed a foreign leader at the base, when President John F. Kennedy received British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Xi, by contrast, did not travel to Beijing airport to receive Trump during the US president’s visit to China in May.

The gesture follows 20 months of tariffs and escalating confrontation, followed by a fragile trade truce, and highlights the internal tensions within Trump’s China policy. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly disappointed officials who expected him to revive the more confrontational approach toward Beijing that characterised the final year of his first presidency.

According to Gewirtz, Trump’s rhetoric has focused primarily on China’s economic treatment of the United States, while showing comparatively less interest in human rights and traditional security issues in the western Pacific.

China Hawks Gain Influence in Trump’s Administration

Beijing initially had grounds to anticipate a tougher US approach. Trump appointed several prominent China critics to senior positions, including Marco Rubio as secretary of state, Mike Waltz as national security adviser and John Ratcliffe as CIA director.

Ivan “Lizard” Kanapathy, a former Top Gun fighter-pilot instructor, became the National Security Council’s senior director for Asia. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth was also viewed as taking a firm position on China, while Elbridge Colby, a prominent advocate of stronger deterrence, was appointed under-secretary of defence for policy.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were similarly regarded as more assertive toward Beijing than their predecessors.

These appointments created expectations that the administration would pursue a sustained pressure campaign against China across trade, technology, defence and national security.

Tariffs Escalate the US-China Trade Confrontation

The policy began to shift during Trump’s global trade war in April 2025, when Washington imposed substantial new tariffs on Chinese imports. Beijing responded with retaliatory measures, prompting Trump to raise US tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 per cent.

The escalation disrupted global markets and affected the US Treasury market, while Bessent warned that the measures effectively amounted to a trade embargo.

China subsequently restricted exports of critical metals and rare-earth materials used in products ranging from smartphones to missiles. Bessent initially dismissed the move as Beijing playing a weak hand, describing it as having “a pair of twos.”

However, US companies soon reported shortages of critical magnets and other materials. Georgetown University professor Evan Medeiros argued that China had developed a “new toolkit of precision economic weapons” following Trump’s first trade war in 2018 and was now deploying those capabilities “at scale and at speed.” In his assessment, China did not have “a pair of twos” but “a royal flush.”

The episode demonstrated how trade restrictions could quickly expand into a broader contest involving strategic resources, industrial supply chains and economic security.

Semiconductors and Rare Earths Complicate US-China Competition

The confrontation also complicated efforts to further restrict China’s access to advanced semiconductor technology.

In May 2025, Jeffrey Kessler, the Commerce Department official responsible for export controls, said the administration was preparing significantly stronger measures against Beijing. His team developed several proposals, but China’s restrictions on rare-earth exports, combined with concerns about protecting the planned Trump-Xi meeting, contributed to the proposals being shelved.

A former US official told the Financial Times that Trump was simultaneously insisting that the United States needed to win the AI race while permitting China continued access to certain advanced chips, describing the policy as lacking “administration strategy or backbone on export controls.”

The administration rejected that assessment, arguing that it had retained Biden-era restrictions on advanced semiconductors while strengthening enforcement.

The dispute illustrates the difficulty of balancing technology competition with the broader economic relationship between Washington and Beijing. Semiconductor controls affect not only national security but also US technology companies, global supply chains and the wider competition over artificial intelligence.

US Export Controls Continue Despite Trade Tensions

The Commerce Department reported that its Bureau of Industry and Security increased fines 18-fold to $324 million in 2025 and expanded its enforcement unit by 52 per cent in 2026, including doubling the number of officers stationed overseas.

The bureau said it had concluded major enforcement cases involving unlawful exports to China, including cases involving Applied Materials and Cadence. It also led an investigation into a $2.5 billion semiconductor-smuggling operation that resulted in indictments and arrests of executives at Super Micro.

These enforcement measures indicate that the administration has continued to pursue restrictions on sensitive technology transfers even while seeking greater stability in the broader US-China relationship.

Trade Truce Tests Washington’s China Strategy

The same tension emerged during preparations for the October Trump-Xi summit in Busan, South Korea.

Following an agreement on a one-year trade truce, Washington postponed additional export controls while Beijing delayed further restrictions on rare-earth materials. With the agreement due to expire on November 10, US officials face the challenge of balancing measures intended to constrain China with Trump’s preference for maintaining the détente.

Trump had also dismissed Waltz and other National Security Council officials who had advocated a harder line toward Beijing. Rubio replaced Waltz and has since focused publicly on implementing Trump’s agenda while maintaining relations with Xi.

The developments highlight the competing priorities within US China policy: economic pressure and technology restrictions remain important tools, but the administration also has an interest in preventing those measures from destabilising negotiations with Beijing.

Security Measures Keep Pressure on Beijing

Nevertheless, China hawks have retained significant room for action, particularly in the security sphere.

The Federal Communications Commission, under Brendan Carr, established a national security unit focused on China and banned several Chinese products, including drones. The Pentagon placed companies such as Alibaba and BYD on a blacklist over alleged links to the People’s Liberation Army, while the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Chinese refineries importing Iranian crude oil.

At the same time, the administration has demonstrated limits to this approach. Treasury subsequently suspended plans to sanction China’s Ministry of State Security over cyber-espionage concerns in order to avoid disrupting the trade truce.

The combination of continued security measures and selective restraint illustrates the competing pressures shaping Washington’s China strategy.

Taiwan Becomes a Test of Trump’s China Policy

Taiwan has exposed these tensions most clearly. Trump initially paused a proposed $14 billion arms package for Taiwan following Chinese warnings that the deal could jeopardise the summit, but later approved a record $11.1 billion package.

After meeting Xi in Beijing, Trump described arms sales to Taiwan as a “good negotiating chip.”

Melanie Hart of the Atlantic Council said the Chinese response reflected surprise while characterising Washington’s handling of the issue as “deft diplomacy.”

For Trump’s China hawks, the broader challenge remains what former CIA China expert Jon Czin described as “having a lid on a boiling pot.”

Pressure for stronger measures against Beijing continues, but security and economic policies must be calibrated around Trump’s effort to preserve his relationship with Xi.

Balancing Economic Pressure and Strategic Engagement

Trump’s China policy therefore combines competing instruments and objectives. Tariffs, export controls, sanctions and security measures provide mechanisms for applying pressure on Beijing, while negotiations, trade agreements and direct engagement with Xi Jinping provide channels for managing the broader relationship.

The resulting policy environment reflects an ongoing tension between officials seeking stronger strategic pressure on China and Trump’s emphasis on maintaining room for negotiation.

Trade, advanced technology, rare-earth materials, Taiwan and national security have consequently become interconnected elements of the wider US-China strategic relationship.