Trump’s Attacks on China Reach New Peak of ‘Pent-Up’ Grievances
- ‘A dam has broken,’ empowering hard-liners, analyst says
- Barrage of moves from banning TikTok to Hong Kong sanctions
Donald Trump on Aug. 6.
Photographer: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
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Donald Trump’s rapid-fire escalation of attacks on China -- from bans of WeChat and TikTok to sanctions on Hong Kong’s top official -- underscores that he’s dropped past restraint and decided to make confronting Beijing his priority less than 90 days before the U.S. election.
The president’s increasingly aggressive stance has opened the door for hard-liners in the administration to push policies delivering on their long-held conviction that Communist Party leaders are bent on world domination, and that successive U.S. administrations underestimated the China threat.