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'When Pentagon officials last fall briefed President Trump on a draft of a bureaucratic defense strategy document, it framed China the same way it had for a decade: as the top security threat facing the U.S.
Trump balked and ordered his Pentagon deputy to rewrite it, according to three officials familiar with the exchange. When the administration’s revised National Defense Strategy published in January, it offered instead a conciliatory tone toward Beijing
“President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China,” an unclassified version of the document declares.
While every administration crafts its own defense strategy, Trump’s second is making the unusual move of discarding a policy that was formulated by his first.
That bipartisan approach sanctioned by Trump 1.0 characterized China as the most consequential U.S. adversary.
The Trump 2.0 framework is instead a seismic shift in U.S. policy, trade practices and rhetoric toward Beijing driven by a new mantra: Don’t rock the boat.
Since Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the South Korean city of Busan in October, the administration has paused hefty tariffs planned on Beijing’s most prized industries; abandoned plans to penalize Chinese companies determined to be security risks to the U.S.; curbed investigations into Beijing-linked hackers; waved through Chinese investment in the U.S. with little scrutiny; and told officials to tone down their comments on China, current and former U.S. officials familiar with the changes said.
Pursuing activities antagonistic to the rival superpower has become further paralyzed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ordering staff that they need his signoff for any China-related actions, people familiar with the matter said. As a result, even senior Commerce officials at times sit by his office waiting or outside the building, watching for his car. Officials at other agencies pursued a ban on a China-linked router maker by styling it as an order that doesn’t name the company or China.
Trump himself didn’t even directly namecheck the economic and military rival in his February State of the Union address.
The dramatic reversals, which have alarmed some of Trump’s own national security aides, are in part aimed at laying the groundwork for Trump’s May meeting with Xi, according to current and former U.S. officials. Many China hawks in the administration have taken to gallows humor, calling the shift the ‘Busan Freeze,’ named for the South Korea meeting between the leaders that produced a fragile trade detente.
Trump’s advisers had initially prepared for a second term full of tough actions on China, recalling a first-term president who had declared Beijing “antithetical to U.S. values and interests,” kicked some Chinese companies out of the U.S. and oversaw aggressive intelligence operations against the country. The second term did begin with tariffs on China that briefly reached nearly 150%...
Beijing invoked a nuclear option it hadn’t dared to in the first term: Last April it [shut down most exports of rare earths, mineral deposits essential for high-tech applications, threatening U.S. production of everything from electric vehicles to missiles, jet fighters, data centers and submarines. China mostly controls the refining, separation and global export of rare earths. Beijing’s willingness to sever such a critical trade tie caught Trump’s team off guard, according to administration officials.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others appealed to Trump to walk back the tariffs and dial down the trade war, to get the minerals flowing again, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Against a president who prides himself on his dealmaking, China often appears to be prevailing.
China “stood up to President Trump with the rare earths, and the U.S. backed down,” said Anja Manuel, a former State Department official working on Asia policy in the George W. Bush administration who now advises companies on geopolitics. “It is really mutual damage control now.”
WSJ
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/trump-china-xi-beijing-e247250d?
We do want peace. It's the PRC who wants to start a war over Taiwan.
Cuba.
Taiwan isn't Cuba. That's the most retarded take I've heard in my life. If I lived another 10,000 years I would never hear a take more retarded than that.
There is no rare earths card. The PRC makes shit up to justify being a totalitarian slave state, as though a country with individual rights wouldn't be able to construct a power plant.