Nixon’s Realism Returns to America’s China Policy Under Trump

When President Donald Trump welcomed Xi Jinping to D.C. last month, much of Washington expected nothing more than political theater.

To the surprise of this administration’s antagonists, Xi departed three days later having agreed to a framework covering $30 billion in trade. Beijing also committed to buying 20 million metric tons of American coal over the next two years, and new talks opened over barriers facing agricultural trade and the rare earth supplies that keep American factories running.

Those results came from an approach Washington once understood well and then spent decades forgetting.

President Richard Nixon first opened relations with communist China in 1972 because he was a realist, and American interests demanded it. Nixon never assumed that a conversation with Beijing meant America could trust them. His foreign policy rested on what he called common interests and mutual agreements rather than what he dismissed as “naive sentimentality.”

That hardheaded realism faded after Nixon left office. Every president until Trump believed that open trade would change China for the better. A richer China would supposedly become freer. Greater access to American markets would illuminate Beijing to the comfort of Western liberty.

China took the access. The Communist Party kept the power.

While Beijing grew richer and more threatening abroad, the Chinese Communist Party’s totalitarian grip at home remained firm. Chinese citizens still live under the brutal thumb of communism, and American workers are still paying the price for Washington’s miscalculation. Research estimates that the growing trade deficit with China displaced 3.7 million American jobs between 2001 and 2018. Nearly 2.8 million were manufacturing jobs.

President Trump got right what every president since Nixon got wrong. When Beijing stole American technology, he imposed punishing tariffs and moved to alleviate our dangerous dependence on China for critical minerals. He returned to office with that same resolve by imposing new tariffs over China’s role in the fentanyl trade and demanding America always lead from a position of strength. America would still talk to China, but the regime would know there was a price for refusing to deal fairly.

The president’s approach yielded a tariff framework that gives American products better access to the world’s second-largest consumer market. China’s coal commitment gives American producers a major new buyer, and agricultural negotiations pry open markets that have frustrated American farmers for years.

I spent my life building a business in Michigan. I learned quickly that the strongest person at a negotiating table is the one willing to walk away from a bad deal. House Republicans understand that; we know diplomacy works better when the other side knows you have options.

Nixon understood that leverage with communist China had to be matched by caution. Beijing’s record of broken promises has only reinforced the need for vigilance. China bought only 58 percent of what it pledged under the 2020 Phase One deal. Xi also broke his promise not to militarize disputed South China Sea islands, and violated World Trade Organization commitments by restricting American wheat, corn, and rice exports.

Its record shows that a promise means little without enforcement, and a handshake means even less if there is no consequence for breaking it.

That is why I wrote the STOP CCP Act to impose financial and visa sanctions on senior Communist Party officials responsible for some of Beijing’s worst abuses. The Biden administration opposed it. House Republicans rejected that cowardly approach and advanced the bill anyway.

Strength at the negotiating table gives us room to ensure we are protecting American technology and reducing our dependence on Chinese supply chains. Securing American farmland and critical infrastructure makes it harder for Beijing to build leverage against us while we are trying to exert ours.

The lesson of the past 50 years is simple. Protect the advantage that made the other side walk through the door in the first place. Nixon understood this intuitively. The seven presidents between him and Trump did not.

President Trump is negotiating because America has interests to advance, markets to expand, and workers to defend. Congress has a responsibility to make sure he enters those negotiations with American technology protected, American farmland secured, and the Chinese Communist Party held accountable.

That is how you negotiate with China: keep the door open, keep your eyes open, and never surrender your leverage.

Nixon opened the door that brought China into the global economy. By the end of his life, he was warning America about what had come through it. Keeping it open today only works if America holds the stronger hand.

A president who bargains from a position of strength, backed by a Congress willing to guard what is ours, can confront China on our terms.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

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