(Bloomberg) — President-elect Donald Trump is poised to pick two men with track records of harshly criticizing China for key posts in his new administration, a sign relations between the superpowers are likely to fray in the coming years.
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Senator Marco Rubio — who has taken an aggressive stance on China’s emergence as an economic power — is set to become the first sitting secretary of state to have been sanctioned by Beijing. Florida Representative Mike Waltz, who has called China a “greater threat” to the US than any other nation, is in line to be national security adviser.
Trump’s emerging bench of high-profile China hawks give some indication of the direction his next term will take, after the Republican campaigned on threats to impose a 60% blanket tariff on Chinese products. Economists say that would decimate trade between the world’s largest economies, dealing a blow to Beijing just as policymakers roll out a major stimulus package to put their nation’s wobbling economy on firmer footing.
“Trump is assembling a foreign policy team packed with tough-on-China politicians that will worry leaders in Beijing,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow for Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “Xi Jinping may become more paranoid about US intentions and feel compelled to undertake stronger shows of force that heighten bilateral tensions.”
Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nomination as US ambassador to the United Nations, has also been outspoken on China, citing national security and economic threats posed by the “Chinese Communist government” as one of her priorities when serving as congresswoman for New York.
Trump isn’t solely surrounded by hawks. Elon Musk’s position in his inner circle could provide a rare balancing force in Trump’s approach to China. The billionaire chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. has extensive business interests in the Asian nation and is routinely received there by senior leaders, including longtime Xi loyalist Premier Li Qiang.
China’s top leader has already congratulated Trump on his White House comeback, in a sign the ruling Communist Party wants to keep things cordial. Xi is also set to meet outgoing President Joe Biden in Peru this week at a summit of world leaders from the Asia-Pacific region, providing an opportunity for Beijing to pass a message to the next administration.
China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday on reports of the Rubio and Waltz selections.
‘Political Weirdo’
Rubio is among a handful of US officials China sanctioned twice in 2020, after the first Trump administration moved to punish Beijing for its handling of Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Michael Pompeo was hit with similar curbs in January 2021, just as Biden was being inaugurated.
Sanctions could frustrate China’s efforts to engage with America’s top diplomat, if he’s barred from entering the Asian country. Former Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu faced a similar predicament, after being elevated to that role despite being subject to US sanctions. American officials, however, said the restrictions wouldn’t prevent him from meeting his US counterparts, leaving some room for maneuver.
Rubio’s appointment would put Beijing in a difficult position, according to Zhu Junwei, a former researcher in the People’s Liberation Army who is now director of American research at Grandview Institution in Beijing. “It would be a nightmare come true,” she said. “China has to consider what to do with the sanctions before being able to have any engagement with him.”
People like Rubio and Waltz will want Trump to shift US attention toward China and away from crises in Ukraine and Gaza, increasing economic, technological, and military pressure on Beijing, according to ASPI’s Thomas.
In a 2022 speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, Rubio spoke about the threat of China. “China now pursues economic imperialism,” he said. “The threat that will define this century is China.” The senator added there were two scenarios for the 21st century: One where a “rising authoritarian power replaced a free society as the world’s most powerful country,” or an alternative where the US prospered.
China’s state-run Global Times newspaper branded Rubio one of Washington’s “political weirdos” in a 2021 opinion piece for leading his country to “dangerous decisions” by stoking anxiety that America was losing out to China.
Waltz, a former Army Green Beret and combat veteran of Afghanistan, has been equally outspoken. Days before the US election, he wrote in the Economist that the US should end conflicts in Europe and the Middle East so it can confront “the greater threat” from China.
“America is not building armed forces to deny a Chinese attack on Taiwan,” he wrote in the article, co-authored with former Pentagon strategist Matthew Kroenig. “A new administration should increase defense spending and revitalize the defense-industrial base to make sure its armed forces are clearly capable of denying a Chinese attack on Taiwan,” they wrote.
China sees Taiwan as a wayward province that must be brought under its control someday, by force if required, and allows no room for negotiation on the topic. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said Washington would come to Taipei’s aid in the event of a Chinese invasion, blurring America’s long-standing position of strategic ambiguity.
“There were a great number of people in China who were hopeful that Trump was a business-oriented pragmatist who would in some way be able to push the US-China relationship forward,” said Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of international relations at Shanghai’s East China Normal University. “With these two people at the helm, that seems very, very unlikely.”
–With assistance from Philip Glamann and Katia Dmitrieva.
