Fortress America
- jtgaltjr
- Jul 18
- 12 min read
Trump Reorganizes Chess Board Against China
Terri Wu is a Washington-based freelance reporter for The Epoch Times covering education and China-related issues. She writes: “President Donald Trump has adopted a hardline approach to China policy in the first three months of his second term, diverging from his predecessor’s and even his own first-term policies.
Trump’s first term marked a significant shift from the decades long U. S.– China policy, which had sought economic cooperation with Beijing in the hope of creating conditions for political reforms in the communist country.
Recognizing the futility of this approach, Trump’s first administration took a tougher stance on China, imposing tariffs on Chinese goods to level the playing field and implementing export controls to maintain America’s lead in advanced technology. The Biden administration took a similar approach and increased these measures for selected sectors and products. In his current term, Trump has upped the ante.
Rather than reacting to China’s moves, the president is proactively rearranging the game board, according to Christopher Balding, a senior fellow at UK-based think tank the Henry Jackson Society.
Trump is using tariffs to open the door to radical change and is “creating a global trade bloc of countries that are allied against China,” Balding told The Epoch Times.
The China strategy is no longer just about export controls on advanced technology and sanctions against Chinese companies with military connections. The Trump administration has also reportedly asked other countries to reduce their trade and economic ties with China in exchange for reductions in tariffs.
Trump’s actions on China are not just to address trade imbalances, according to Yeh Yao-Yuan, a professor of international studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. He said the president is using tariffs and trade to weaken the global influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The CCP has sensed the unprecedented challenge—Chinese state media outlets have called the U. S.–China tariff conflict a “ battle for national destiny.” It’s the underlying reason that the Chinese regime is alone in increasing its retaliatory tariffs on the United States over multiple rounds, according to Mike Sun, a U. S.-based businessman with decades of experience advising foreign investors and traders doing business in China. He used an alias to protect himself from reprisals from the regime.
Currently, a 145 percent U. S. tariff applies to all Chinese goods. Some products, such as electric vehicles and syringes, have levies as high as 245 percent because of tariffs imposed before Trump’s second term. U. S. goods face a 125 percent tariff when exported to China.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, at a closed-door event on April 22, said he expects a de-escalation by both sides in the “very near future.” A day later, he assured reporters that the United States hadn’t offered any unilateral concessions. The president has confirmed that Beijing has reached out to negotiate and is currently in talks. He has refuted the regime’s claims that the two sides are not communicating.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has claimed that respect should precede trade talks. In the CCP parlance, that means that the United States cannot restrict China’s rise and development, according to Sun. Because the current tariff standoff is a symptom of the larger U. S.–China conflict, rather than the cause, the three experts do not see much room for meaningful negotiation for either side.
They do not expect Trump to pause his offensive against China during trade talks.
Taking on CCP’s Belt and Road Outside the trade war, the Trump administration has set its sights on removing the CCP’s influence over the Panama Canal. “China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China,” Trump said in his inauguration speech in January. “We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”
The waterway is a strategic chokepoint that plays a crucial role in U. S. military and economic activities, serving as a vital passage for warships and cargo between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. By addressing Panama, the administration has also begun to address the regime’s Maritime Silk Road, Sun told The Epoch Times.
The Maritime Silk Road is a component of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, also known as One Belt, One Road, the flagship foreign policy program of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He established the initiative in 2013, his first year as the Party’s top leader.
Beijing uses the Belt and Road Initiative to expand its economic and military influence through global infrastructure development. About 80 percent of U.N. members, or 152 countries, have signed memoranda of understanding for the geopolitical platform, according to the Chinese regime.
In 2017, months after cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan, Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela visited Beijing. At a meeting with Xi, Varela signed Belt and Road agreements, making the country the first in Latin America to join the program. With Panama as its base, Beijing expanded the Belt and Road platform to more than a dozen countries in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Xi also visited the Panama Canal in 2018.
The CCP has focused on expanding its influence through the Global South, particularly in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, according to Michael Shoebridge, founder and director of think tank Strategic Analysis Australia.
He told The Epoch Times that Beijing’s path to establishing its version of the global order is to dominate the Global South economically. “A security, strategic, and political partnership is a natural following,” Shoebridge said.
In the direction we were going, we were going to wake up one day and realize the Chinese were setting up naval bases in the Western Hemisphere from where they can threaten us. Now, the CCP’s influence in Panama is being dismantled.
U. S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Panama on his first foreign trip in February. After meeting with Rubio, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino announced that his country won’t renew its Belt and Road agreement. “We are going to study the possibility of whether it can be finished earlier or not,” Mulino said on Feb. 2. “I think it is due for renewal in one or two years.” Panama, the first Latin American country to join the Belt and Road Initiative, will also become the first to drop out.
Hong Kong company CK Hutchinson controls ports on both ends of the Panama Canal, prompting concerns from some experts that the Chinese regime could exercise control over the canal, particularly in the event of a conflict. In early March, a U. S. business consortium led by BlackRock struck a deal with CK Hutchinson to purchase the rights to operate their ports at each end of the Panama Canal. On March 28, Chinese authorities put the deal under investigation, effectively halting it.
In addition to the Panama Canal, the U. S. Federal Maritime Commission has identified other global maritime chokepoints and launched an examination into them. They include the Northern Sea Passage, the English Channel, the Malacca Strait, the Singapore Strait, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Suez Canal.
Among the seven chokepoints, China’s state-owned enterprises or Chinese companies operate ports at five of them, according to the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Although Beijing doesn’t operate any ports along the Northern Sea Passage, it holds significant port projects in the broader English Channel/North Sea region.
The Trump administration has also taken action on land. During Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit in February, the White House announced a pact to advance commerce and defense collaborations between the two countries, including further investment in the India–Middle East–Europe Corridor, an initiative that began during the Biden administration under the U. S. infrastructure program designed to counter the Belt and Road. The corridor runs from India to Cyprus and Greece, passing through Israel, Italy, and France. It will compete with the current shipping route via the Suez Canal.
Rubio, in an interview with Breitbart News in February, said the Trump administration is taking an offensive posture against China. “In the direction we were going, we were going to wake up one day and realize the Chinese were setting up naval bases in the Western Hemisphere from where they can threaten us. We were going to wake up and realize that they were the dominant trading partner with all the countries that are our neighbors,” he said. The Trump administration is “ beginning to reverse all of that,” he said.
Trump’s actions have already put Xi on the defensive, Balding said. Xi held a two-day conference with the Communist Party Politburo in early April, emphasizing the need to “ build a community with a shared future for neighboring countries,” according to Chinese state media outlet Xinhua. Along with the highest Party officials, Chinese ambassadors to Asian countries and the United Nations also attended the meeting in person. The last time the CCP held a meeting like this was 12 years ago, shortly after Xi launched the Belt and Road Initiative.
In April, Xi also visited Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam to advance various Belt and Road-related projects, including railways, ports, and artificial intelligence. Trump’s new approach to the Chinese regime is not without risks and challenges, according to experts. Whether other countries align with the United States or China will affect global leadership. Shoebridge says the tariffs during Trump’s first term were good moves but that the president’s universal tariffs on allied countries this term are eroding trust between the United States and its allies.
Amy K. Mitchell, a founding partner at geopolitical consultancy Kilo Alpha Strategies, said “The U. S. has to be careful about how it plays its cards now, so as to not alienate our natural allies, and to recognize at the end of the day who the adversary is.” China is also working to pull U. S. allies closer to Beijing, including making overtures to the European Union and hosting the Spanish prime minister.
Yeh said U. S. allies’ different economic and security approaches have so far led them to maintain good relations with the United States while still participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But that might be changing, he said. Yeh said Trump’s first 100 days were laying the groundwork for countries to make a mutually exclusive choice between the United States and China. Going forward, no country will be able to play both sides anymore, he said.
Gordan Chang, a China expert, sounded the alarm on the stakes involved. “This is an existential struggle,” Chang told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” in April. “ It is more than just a trade war, more than just a tariff war, and we better win it.”
How allies react to the pressure of aligning with the United States vis-à-vis China is yet to be seen. The Trump administration has spent its first 100 days building its defense personnel, according to Mitchell, so U. S. policy on China isn’t as fully formed on the security front as it is on the economic side.
The Chinese regime has increased its military pressure against Taiwan by “300 percent,” Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of the U. S. Indo-Pacific Command, said at an April hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee. He warned that the regime’s actions near Taiwan were no longer drills but “rehearsals.”
Beijing has also imposed export controls on all rare earths to the United States, reduced the import limit for American movies, and initiated investigations into American companies in China. The showdown between the world’s largest and second-largest economies could unfold in various ways, Balding said, but it’s too soon to predict the outcome.
“We’re 30 seconds into a three-hour movie, so we can’t be judging [Trump] on how well he has done,” he said. “In reality, you would have to judge him probably five years after he left office.”
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Trump’s Tariff Strategy Is Reclaiming US Industry From China
Antonio Graceffo, PhD, is a China economy analyst who has spent more than 20 years in Asia. Graceffo is a graduate of the Shanghai University of Sport, holds an MBA from Shanghai Jiaotong University, and studied national security at American Military University. is an American economist, China analyst and author who has lived in several Asian countries. He is a frequent writer, providing analysis of the Chinese economy and geopolitics.
He writes for The Epoch Times: “As part of the Trump administration’s trade war with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), some Chinese imports now face tariffs of up to 245 percent, a move widely criticized as chaotic but actually central to a deliberate strategy to break China’s grip on U. S. supply chains and secure a better deal for the United States.
One of President Donald Trump’s first acts during his second term was to direct the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party to reassess U. S.–China trade relations. The committee’s findings, consistent with those of the previous three administrations, were that Washington’s long-standing strategy had failed. China had grown stronger at America’s expense, exploiting trade privileges while the U. S. economy had been hollowed out.
In response, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), the committee chairman, and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) introduced in late January the Restoring Trade Fairness Act, the first bipartisan legislation designed to revoke China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status. The bill proposes tiered tariffs—35 percent on non-strategic goods and 100 percent on strategic goods—phased in over five years, with strategic sectors defined based on U. S. priorities and in response to China’s “Made in China 2025” plan.
In addition to eliminating PNTR with no future recertification, the committee also recommended closing the de minimis loophole, a move that Trump implemented through an executive order in April.
Supporters of revoking China’s trade privileges argue it is a necessary course correction after decades of failed policy. For years, U. S. strategy rested on the assumption that economic liberalization in China would lead to political reform. Promoted by leaders such as President Bill Clinton, this approach led the United States to support China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and to grant it PNTR status in 2000. The expectation was that prosperity would produce democratic pressures and make China a responsible stakeholder in the international system.
Instead, the CCP maintained authoritarian control, built a surveillance state, and funneled trade benefits into military expansion and global influence operations. While the United States lost factories, jobs, and strategic resilience, the Chinese regime grew richer and more aggressive.
Despite repeated intelligence warnings that the regime posed a top-tier national security threat, successive administrations allowed offshoring to continue, weakening American industry and enriching a rival determined to challenge U.S. leadership. While some critics warn of the economic risks of revoking this trade status, the Trump administration and several policy experts argue that granting special trade privileges to China was a costly mistake and that restoring control over the United States’ industrial and strategic capacity is now essential.
To close a major loophole in U. S. trade enforcement, Trump revoked de minimis duty-free treatment for Chinese and Hong Kong imports under $800, a move consistent with the recommendations of the House Select Committee on the CCP. His executive order imposed a 90 percent ad valorem tariff on low-value shipments and introduced flat-rate duties, starting at $75 per package on May 2 and rising to $150 by June 1. These measures specifically targeted Chinese e-commerce platforms that had exploited a loophole to flood the U. S. market with untaxed, uninspected goods.
The goal was to reduce tariff evasion, sever dependence on Chinese supply chains, and counter Beijing’s role in fueling America’s fentanyl crisis.
Trump followed this action with a Section 232 investigation launched on April 15 to assess the national security risks associated with the United States’ reliance on critical minerals sourced from China.
The move came after the CCP weaponized its export control regime by banning shipments of gallium, germanium, antimony, and six rare earth metals—materials vital to U. S. defense, aerospace, and semiconductor industries.
In response to retaliatory tariffs imposed by Beijing, the United States leveled a combined tariff burden of up to 245 percent on some Chinese imports. This included a 125 percent reciprocal tariff, a 20 percent penalty for fentanyl-related offenses, and targeted Section 301 tariffs ranging from 7.5 percent to 100 percent.
These restrictions are likely to deal a significant blow to China. The United States remains China’s largest export market, accounting for approximately $501.2 billion in goods in 2023—about 14 percent of China’s total exports and 2.9 percent of its GDP. At the same time, GDP growth has become a key measure of legitimacy for Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
While China posted (alleged) double-digit growth in the early 2000s, it has seen a steady decline in its growth figures recent years. In 2024, growth was estimated at 4.9 percent, with projections for 2025 ranging between 3.4 and 4.5 percent, reflecting mounting trade tensions and worsening structural challenges.
Trump dubbed April 2, the day his tariff plan took effect, “Liberation Day.” While the media (predictably) portrayed the sweeping tariff measures as chaotic and a self-inflicted crisis, they are part of a deliberate strategy.
On April 15, Trump paused tariffs for more than 75 countries that reached out to his administration to negotiate but left those on China fully intact, signaling that the CCP remains the central target of his trade policy.
At the heart of Trump’s approach is a simple but powerful truth: The United States is the world’s most valuable consumer market, and no country can afford to lose access to 340 million middle-and high-income American buyers. Instead of appeasing Beijing or ignoring years of intelligence warnings, Trump directly confronted China’s export-driven model.
Foreign-invested companies account for a third of China’s trade, according to China’s commerce ministry, and many are now relocating to avoid rising U. S. tariffs. What critics call chaos is actually a calculated realignment of global supply chains.
These moves represent a broader shift in U. S. industrial policy, focused on protecting critical sectors, reducing strategic dependence, and countering the CCP’s economic aggression. While Trump continues to demand fairer terms from all trade partners, the 245 percent tariff on some Chinese goods may signal more than just leverage—it points to a deliberate strategy to decouple the U. S. economy from the Chinese regime.”
Next time: Is There Anything Real About the CCP’s ‘Great’ China?
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