Trump’s playing right into China’s hands

Just one month into his second term, President Trump 2.0 has angered America’s longstanding allies and wreaked havoc on Uncle Sam’s carefully cultivated soft-power diplomacy.

While the chaos is hard to keep track of, the upshot could hardly be more clear: Trump is opening the door for China to dethrone the US’s global preeminence.

How is Trump pushing the rest of the world away? Let us count the ways.

First, he has alienated even close allies with tariffs and diplomatic bombast. Trump put all US allies on notice when he threatened its immediate neighbors and largest trading partners, Mexico and Canada, with 25% tariffs if they don’t meet his demands on border control.

Meanwhile, the patently non-threatening nation of Denmark, a NATO ally no less, must grapple with Trump’s stated desire to acquire Greenland. And, for good measure, Trump has claimed that Taiwan “stole our chip business,” threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal and left Zelensky out in the cold while he and Putin privately negotiate an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Trump isn’t just turning over all the stones in his search for friends to disparage. He is giving them a heave. In the face of such an onslaught, who would blame even America’s closest allies for second-guessing their relationship with Washington?

Second, Trump is pitting Silicon Valley against the world. At the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris last week, Vice President JD Vance declined to sign a commitment to “ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all.” Nevertheless, Vance proclaimed the US as the “leader” in AI. In truth, the US was the clear loser in Paris.

Third, Trump has declared war on sustainable energy. He pulled out of the Paris Agreement and halted funding to install domestic electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, and he plans to cut the US$7,500 tax credit for EV purchases. Again, the US is an outlier, prioritizing the reactionary mantra “drill, baby, drill” over the green energy revolution.

Obviously, many nations have good reason to be disillusioned with the US. But can China actually position itself as an attractive replacement partner? The answer is yes – and here, too, we can count the ways.

First, China now has an opening in the arena of global trade. This is a continuation of Trump 1.0, when his first spat with China ended miserably. China never came close to buying an additional $200 billion in US imports after it signed what Trump called a “historic trade deal” in 2020.

Soured relations with the US forced China to seek greener pastures in the Global South, where China’s exports in 2023 nearly matched its sales to the European Union and US combined.

Xi would like nothing more than to be the largest trading partner for America’s immediate neighbors. Canada has exactly what China needs: lumber, wheat, petroleum and lobsters. And Mexico-China bilateral trade grew from $43 billion in 2016 to a whopping $100 billion in 2023, while Chinese foreign direct investments to Mexico have grown by 50% annually since 2018.

Second, when it comes to AI, China has become the friend of global collaboration. Chinese company DeepSeek’s newly released generative artificial intelligence model is open source and free for anyone to use.

Similarly, China’s largest tech companies – Huawei, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent – are aggressively developing, investing and promoting open-source technologies. This is in stark contrast to American companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta that rely on closed, propriety technologies.

China understands that whoever wins the high-tech arms race also controls the global balance of power. Its approach to AI is a new form of “ping-pong diplomacy.” China is happy to take the global lead in setting the guardrails for how AI (among other technologies) will be designed and implemented.

Third, unlike the US under Trump, China grasps the connection between sustainable energy, high tech and global hegemony (both economic and geopolitical).

Autonomous driving, for example, can only be implemented in EVs; fossil-fuel cars would have to consume too much fuel to run the requisite multitude of sensors, computers and electronics.

And only the most advanced AI models with billions (if not trillions) of data points will successfully operate an autonomous vehicle. China now garners 76% of the world’s EV market share, and much of the technology is open source.

In short, China gets it. Offering inexpensive, open-source EVs and AI models isn’t just – as Trump sees it – about the almighty dollar. Rather, it’s soft power in the form of 1s and 0s. While Trump prioritizes making America great again, China can say that it wants to make the world great again.

Briefly setting aside his fixation on Greenland (not to mention Gaza), Trump recently signed an executive order banning the use of paper straws in all federal buildings. “We’re going back to plastic,” he explained, adding that paper straws “explode if something’s hot.” It’s fair to say that the rest of the world is worried about other sorts of explosions.

America’s allies now face a decision. Do they choose free trade over tariffs, open source over closed technology, and sustainable energy over fossil fuels? Incredibly, Trump has allowed China to seize the mantle of progress in all three areas.

His approach inspires shock but not awe. He is positioning America for second place.

Stanley Chao is the author of “Selling to China” and has lived and worked in China for over 20 years.