, Columnist
Going Soft on China Could Be a Hard Lesson
The first time around, the president forged a bipartisan consensus to get tough on Beijing. Now he’s undermining it.
Xi points the way forward.
Photographer: Thomas Peter/Getty Images
In his first term as president, Donald Trump made the new cold war consensus on China — the broad bipartisan agreement that Beijing is America’s most dangerous competitor and must be dealt with as such. He seems bent on breaking it in his second.
Trump is barreling toward a bad bargain with Beijing. He’s weakening the US position in the fight for global primacy. And he’s using his dominance of the Republican Party to mute opposition to this dangerous course.