Fresh Air - How Trump increased China's global power

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Former national security official Rush Doshi says President Trump’s 2025 sky-high tariffs on Chinese goods sparked a clash in which China prevailed. Doshi spoke with Dave Davies about  the current state of U.S.-China relations and President Trump’s meeting with President Xi in Beijing. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is fresh air. I'm Dave Davies. Day one of the summit in Beijing between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping yielded no substantive agreements. But statements from the two sides following their first meeting reflected differing priorities. While the U.S. side emphasized hope for productive trading relationships between the countries, the Chinese statement warned that if the issue of Taiwan was not handled properly, it could put the U.S.-China relationship in, quote, an extremely dangerous. situation. For some perspective on the issues that will frame further discussions, we turn to Rush

Doshi, a China expert who worked on the National Security Council in the Biden administration. He wrote last fall that when Trump launched his trade war against China in 2025, he mistook political theater for strategy, lost ground to his adversary, and made it clear that China now stands as America's true peer in geopolitical rivalry. During his tenure at the National Center, Security Council, though she coordinated U.S. government policy on China and Taiwan, drafted the administration's China strategy and negotiated with Chinese counterparts. He's now an assistant professor in Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, a senior fellow and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of The Long Game, China's Grand

Strategy to Displace American Order. We recorded our interview yesterday. Rush Doshi, welcome to fresh air. Thank you. Great to be here. You know, we read news about tariffs and trade wars, and it can be hard to follow, hard to see it in context, see how meaningful the latest move is. But you had a remarkable piece a few months back about what happened in this trade war between the U.S. and China and argued that there was a moment when China really proved that it was America's equal. This was, it began, you know, in 2025, in the second Trump administration, when President Trump began using tariffs, one of his favorite tools, and hit China particularly hard imposing tariffs as high as 140 percent.

How did China respond? There are moments, quite frankly, in world history where you feel the tectonic plates shifting beneath you. You know, what happened in 2025 was President Trump took tariffs on China to over 140 percent. I mean, we'd never done that before. And that pushed China into a corner. And President Xi had no choice but to reach for his break glass tool. And that was his control over the rareth minerals and magnets upon which pretty much all global manufacturing depends and which basically only come from China.

And so that was a real powerful choke point. And when he reached for that tool, President Trump basically folded. He'd heard from auto companies that they were concerned that their production was going to shut down if they couldn't get these minerals. Others made similar representations to the White House. And so he said, all right, let me take the tariffs down by about 100 points and even below that. And after he did that, he also basically pursued a detente with China. The idea was, we don't want to rock the boat too much with China. They've got this enormous capability.

Let's avoid too many competitive actions that the Chinese won't like. Let's avoid anything confrontational. Let's just steady as she goes. Which actually met in practice some American economic interests weren't being protected because there was a risk. You're right that Trump actually had considered retaliating with financial sanctions, new controls on, you know, sophisticated manufactured. computer chips could have been very strong measures, but he decided not to. That's right. I think President Trump had a number of options available to him, and they were risky.

Let's be clear, they would have been escalatory. But one was perhaps cutting off more advanced AI chips to China, and other was cutting off less advanced AI chips to China, which China relies on U.S. technology to manufacture. Another possibility was going after certain Chinese banks with financial sanctions. And a fourth one might have been to go after China's dependence on certain American software. At the end of the day, all those options I think were considered, but none of them were used. And part of the reason why is the president didn't want to have more instability. He didn't want to have a really negative market reaction.

And there was concern. You know, China still had the rare earth's tool, and it was a very powerful tool. Maybe this wouldn't be enough to fix that problem. I think it's worth taking a second here just to say how wild the Chinese action was because we really haven't seen anything like it. What China said in April, but then especially in October, the second time they forced to, us to back down, was that any good anywhere in the world that had 0.1% of its value come from a rare earth mineral or magnet made in China. That good had to have a license from China to be sold anywhere else in the world. There is no U.S. action in export controls. It's anything like that.

And if you ask the Chinese, what they'll say is this isn't modeled off your export controls, America. This is modeled off your financial sanctions. Your dollar is the most important thing for global commerce, and our rare earths are similar. And just as you say, nobody can use your dollars if you say so, we're saying nobody can use our rare earths if we say so. And that was a very powerful moment, I think, in the relationship. It changed things. Yeah, you're right that historians may someday look back on this as the moment when China became America's geopolitical equal. I think so. I mean, I think what we saw in this episode in 2025 was that the U.S. really brought the full pressure it has in the economics, based on it.

China. But for the first time, China was able to use a tool to force open America's market to China's goods. And that's a game changer. Now, you worked on China policy in the Biden administration. And, you know, there are some analysts who are very critical of Donald Trump for many reasons who will say that he does deserve credit for identifying the lopsided arrangements with China, subsidizing its exports and engaging in unfair trade practices. Do they have a point? Well, I think we have to take a step back and ask what it is China wants to accomplish. China wants to have the world more dependent on China's supply chains.

It wants to be less dependent on the worlds. That's a policy that they call dual circulation in the economic space. In technology, China wants to win what it calls the fourth industrial revolution. The idea is here that there's been several, right? The first industrial revolution, call that steam power. Great Britain won that, became a world power. The second one, call it electrification, and the third one, mass manufacturing thing. I think Thomas Edison to Henry Ford.

The U.S. won that and became back-to-back World War II victors and built the system that we know today, became a global power. And China thinks that AI and robotics and quantum and all of this will comprise the next industrial revolution, and they want to win it, not just for the sake of wealth, but also for the sake of power. And I think the Trump administration understood in the first term and the Biden administration continued this that a lot of China's economic action. were essentially dumping cheap, subsidized, increasingly high-quality goods on the U.S. with the state banks underwriting all of it in ways they were putting our companies out of business. And for the sake of American workers and American businesses, we had to respond to protect our companies from unfair competition that would destroy our industries. You know, just a day or two before his departure to Beijing, Trump announced a lengthy list of high-profile business executives he was going to take with him, Elon Musk, Tim Cook of Apple, others. What do you make of that? Well, it's an important fact that these executives

are traveling with President Trump. I will note, though, that President Trump has brought even bigger delegations to other countries. I think when he traveled to the Gulf, there was even larger delegation of CEOs. But in this case, what we're seeing is a number of key companies that have important business in China are traveling with the president. He's indicated that having these executives with him suggests that there's a lot that the U.S. can do for China's economy, that these companies can be a part of the Chinese economic story. I think some of that might be true, but it's also the case, and we have to be honest, that China in many ways is less interested in buying from these companies, not just today, but over time they're going to wind their

market share down. And so it's a good signal. It suggests that there's commerce that keeps the two countries tied together, and that is the ballast historically in the relationship. But the truth is this is a different China, one that is more confident in investing in its own companies, exporting around the world and frankly buying less from American companies who it hopes to phase out of its own internal market. You know, there was this recent court decision which declared Trump's tariffs to be illegally enacted. There are still going to be appeals over that and he thinks he has ways around it.

Does that reduce his leverage with President Xi? Well, a little bit in the sense that I think what China is hoping for is to keep a tariff rate low. They don't want a high tariff rate. They want to sell more to the United States. And they also don't want it to be unpredictable. They don't want to have to guess what the rate will be. So in both cases, their goals are going to be easier to achieve if the president can't use the AIPA tariff.

That's what was sort of called what allowed him to kind of unilaterally put tariffs on China and set the level himself. That's the tariff that's supposedly based upon national security emergencies. That's right. It's right. And he declared that the trade deficit with China was a national security emergency and therefore this tool could be used. He has other ways of getting the tariff rate back up on China. if he wants, but I'll just note this for you. If he uses those instruments and he's already begun that process, China could treat that as a fresh escalation and that they could respond

again with their own escalation. And so the challenge we have is ever since 2025, the dynamic has shifted. And China feels like it has the leverage to push the U.S. off its preferences. One of the thing here is very interesting. You know, often in the history of international economics, some countries will use tools to open up the markets of other countries. The U.S. has very rarely been victim to those tools. It's very rarely the key. case that another country will use a tool to force open the U.S. market. But that is what China did in 2025. And at this summit, their aim is going to be essentially to keep open that access to the U.S. market because they need it. They can't buy all the things that they make. They've got to sell

them abroad. And there's no better market than the U.S. That's where they get their margin. And what do they want to sell to the U.S. consumers? Well, they want to sell everything. I mean, right now, China is basically pursuing a strategy of supply chain dominance. They want to lead in production of some of the low-tech goods, like, you know, for example, everything from your furniture to even your toys and certain kind of low-tech consumer electronic equipment. And then they also want to sell the high-end stuff as well. And that includes cars, that includes batteries, obviously includes sophisticated electronic devices and biotechnology products and pharmaceuticals among many, many other categories.

The question for the U.S., though, is if we're going to start buying all this high-end stuff from China, what's the business model of the U.S. going to be? And one illustration, so when China joined the WTO, the World Trade Organization, it got more stable and predictable access to Western markets. And that meant that investors felt comfortable putting their money there. And that meant that in turn, China could become even more successful in manufacturing. And here's just an illustration of what that looked like in practice. Back then, in 2001, the U.S. was about a third of all global manufacturing. And China was maybe 6 to 7%.

Today, 25 years later, the U.S. share has fallen by half, or maybe below 15%. and China has gone up by fivefold to about 30% of global manufacturing. And that is why the U.S. has these dependencies that China can exploit because the U.S. stopped making the stuff that it needed. In the case of rare earth magnets, the rare earth magnet was invented in the United States, in fact, by a subsidiary of General Motors. But that subsidiary was sold off to China in the 1990s, and despite multiple efforts to bring back that technology, we just never got it done. So when that happened, there was a huge shock to the U.S. economy. We probably lost millions of manufacturing. manufacturing jobs and thousands of factories and certain industries never came back. There's the possibility we could see a second China shock. And this summit should be a place to discuss that possibility.

But given what happened last year, given the president's focus on just a few quick wins on the economic side and given the lack of interest in both sides in tackling these big thorny structural problems, I'm not sure we're going to get to that question of how we handle a second China shock or even stop it from coming. The second China shock would be new industries in which China, Chinese imports displaced American manufacturing. Is that what you're talking about? Exactly. The first China shock displaced a lot of low-end American manufacturing. The second China shock would displace a lot of high-end American manufacturing. And that is essentially all that's left. And so losing that high-end manufacturing will be devastating for the U.S. economy. And let me give you a few

examples. You know, one of the things America still does well is it can make cars, a lot of them. And quite frankly, the Chinese electric vehicles are cheaper. They receive some government. and support, and they've leapfrogged us in that technology. If you were to open up the U.S. market to those cars, consumers would get a good deal, but probably millions of auto workers and the people who support them from the dealerships to the suppliers would go out of business, and those companies wouldn't be able to adapt. So you have to be careful with how you handle that issue, and others by a technology. A lot of the key therapeutics that we're going to use to beat cancer and other diseases, they are basically increasingly manufactured in China. We may be doing

some of the innovation here, some of the innovation happens there. But we've lost the ability to make some of those medicines. That does create not only the risk of jobs, but also the risk of dependency. And the same way we've seen China weaponize its raret supply chain is the possibility could always do so for medicines. And so what China wants to do is to get manageable tariffs from the United States to put that into its calculations and market its vehicles and other goods to the United States? He would love to sell cars to the U.S. Right now, the Trump administration is saying that's not going to happen. They could always change their mind. But look, China has a problem. They have a $1.2 trillion surplus with the world in terms of their exports. That means they export that much more than they import

to the whole world. That's an amount so large we haven't seen anything like that before. And not only that, it means that China doesn't have the ability to absorb what it produces. So it has to sell it abroad. And when it does sell it abroad, it's willing to sell it at low costs, which means it destroys industries around the world because it's dumping on their markets. That's a bigger problem for Japan or Korea or Germany, which go head to head in a lot of these sectors where China is increasingly dominant, but it's also a problem for the U.S. And I think for President Xi, a key goal of the summit is can he keep selling? The United States wants China to buy more soybeans, Boeing planes, some other goods. Do you think

that President Trump has a shot at getting China to buy more of that stuff? Yeah, I think he has a good shot. I think there's a good chance that China will, in fact, buy Boeing aircraft because it needs them, and also because it'll buy soybeans and other agricultural products because that's been a key request of the U.S. president. I will just say that agenda where we go to China and say, let's sell these three or four things and not let's solve this big structural economic problem between our two countries is a modest agenda. It's also an agenda which basically suggests we're going to have an export profile that kind of looks like Brazil. You know, Brazil sells a few planes and it sells a lot of agricultural products. The U.S. should aspire for more.

more than the ability to sell soybeans to China. So when you say solving this big structural economic problem, how would you describe that? Very simple. China exports way more than it imports. And increasingly, it's trying to substitute out U.S. exports entirely. It doesn't want to buy from the U.S. other than some commodities, perhaps, and maybe advanced chips, only for now eventually it would want to be able to indigenize those. It wants to sell.

So the structural problem in our relationship is that China wants to sell and it doesn't want to buy. That's the structural problem. And that, you know, if you go back across the history of economics, there's sort of a model that's laissez-faire, you know, let everybody just kind of do what they do, trade across borders. And there's a model that mercantilist, and it believes the mercantilist model that trade and economics is a form of wealth and power. And you want to use your trade and your economic base to basically get leverage and wealth that otherwise would be difficult. So, you know, China doesn't act like a free trader. It acts like a mercantilist.

Its goal is to sell more, buy less, and make more money. that way and make you dependent essentially on their supply chains that way. And they're on track to do that. One of the things that I've heard about this summit is there's talk of establishing a Board of Trade. I mean, there's already a World Trade Organization. What would this Board of Trade do? Well, it's a great question because, you know, trade between the U.S. and China largely happens through market mechanisms. There are some tariffs. There's other things like non-tariff barriers to make it harder for the trade to go across borders. But generally speaking, we don't have what's called managed trade where you say, all right, you can't sell more than this quantity of X. I'll buy this quantity of Y.

A board of trade would be a forum, I think the way it's being sold, to adjudicate some of these trading differences, where we say, we'd like you to buy more of this. They might say, I'd like to sell more of that. And you sort of work it out as a deal rather than leave it purely to the market to determine the total trade volume and composition between the two countries. So it's a highly interventionist, again, managed form of trade. And it could have its upsides, but it won't solve, as I mentioned earlier, this structural problem that China sells way more than they're willing to buy. You know, when I hear you say that there's this problem of China having this huge surplus of trade and it has to sell more. more stuff abroad in order to keep its industry going, employ its population. I mean, it kind of sounds like a justification for Trump's policy of tariffs. But I guess the question is, what kind

of leverage do you have, right? I think that the Trump administration is right to consider protection against China's excess capacity. But it can't do it alone. It has to work with allies and partners to make that more effective. You know, if the U.S. says, I'll buy fewer Chinese goods and those goods flood Europe. Europe has big problems, but also that means we can't sell to Europe. And so ultimately, there is some continuity across the political parties here and being concerned about what the implications are of this significant amount of production. You know, there's also been some commentary that whatever their differences, the United States and China, have to cooperate on AI because of the threat of, you know,

autonomous AI systems that could empower terrorists to knock out electric grids or wreak other kinds of havoc. What do you make of that notion? The U.S. and China have to work together to solve a number of transnational global problems, everything from climate to the next pandemic to nuclear nonproliferation. And now AI is on that list too. There's been some speculation that at the summit there will be an announcement of an artificial intelligence dialogue. We had one in the Biden administration. I was involved in negotiating the start of it to create it. And it came out in the summit between President Biden and President Xi in 2023. But I will tell you when the dialogue was held in 2024, the Chinese didn't send the kind of representation that you would need to make real progress on some of these

issues. It didn't feel like they took it as seriously as we did. So hopefully that could change. The second possibility is that the two countries get together and they basically launch an AI crisis mechanism, sort of like a hotline where something goes, wrong. We can call the other side. Somebody will pick up the phone and we can work through a problem. The only thing I'll tell you about that is we have a lot of crisis mechanisms between the U.S. and China. But China historically hasn't picked up the phone. So back in 2001, a Chinese aircraft collided with one of our aircraft. We wanted to pick up the phone and call them. They didn't answer. Then in 2022, a Chinese balloon overfrew the United States violated American sovereignty. We picked up

the phone to call them. Again, they didn't answer through our hotline. So I'm glad. I'm glad. that the Trump administration and the Chinese side are thinking about AI, and they'll talk about it. That's a good thing for the world. But the thing is the world has to push not just for a cheap dialogue, but a good dialogue, and not just for a crisis communication mechanism, but one that gets answered when there's an actual crisis. We have to collectively push for better outcomes. They literally didn't answer the phone. They literally did not answer the phone.

We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Rush Doshype. He worked on China policy at the National Security Council. He's now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He'll be back to talk more about the U.S. China summit after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air.

I'm Dave Davies, and we're talking about President Donald Trump's summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with Rush Doshi, a senior fellow and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. On the table at the summit are a series of high-stakes issues, including tariffs, trade, the war with Iran, and the prospect of military conflict over Taiwan. In statements from each side after the first day of talks, China emphasized the status of Taiwan, warning that if it were mishandled, it could put the U.S.-China relationship in a dangerous situation. The U.S. statement focused on the importance of productive trade relationships. We recorded our conversation with Rush Doshi yesterday. You know, there is this technology, these advanced chips that the

United States has. The firm, Navidia, of course, is one of the most valuable companies in the world, right? And it's headed by Jensen Wong, who is actually a Taiwanese ancestry, I believe. He accompanied President Trump on this trip. Should we attribute any significance to that? Well, it's interesting. You know, he's not only on the trip, you know, Elon Musk and Jensen Wang, we're both on Air Force One on the way to China. And what's interesting about his inclusion is that it suggests that maybe the two sides will be talking about chips, right? Because that's what Jensen Huang makes. He designs the world's best artificial intelligence ships. They're actually made in Taiwan. And so the question for U.S. policymakers has been, you know, given that artificial

intelligence is a transformative technology with significant implications for American prosperity and security, too, should the best chips that we have be sold to China. And there's actually a limited number of these chips. The demand for them is so high. that you could meet it entirely by selling to American companies. They don't even have enough of these chips. So there's been this big debate. And I think in Congress, what's happened is there's been a bipartisan view. And this was the Biden administration's view and the first Trump administration's view that the best AI chips should probably not be sold to China, at least not at first. There should be made available to Americans first. And that'll give America a lead in this technology. And there's another view which says, no, you should sell the chips to China. And if you sell them, they'll become sort of addicted to your chips and they'll never break.

their dependence and that'll be good for you. I think the challenge with that argument is twofold. First of all, it doesn't look like China wants to be addicted. It's going to keep investing in the ability to break that addiction anyway. And so they're not inclined to take our chips and keep taking them forever. And if we sell them now, they might get the lead in artificial intelligence because they have a lot of other assets. The other issue here is that, you know, could China, as some say, just quickly break their

dependence on us and catch up an AI if we don't sell them the chips? In other words, if we don't sell them, won't we be incentivizing them to just basically go for broke and figure out how to make this stuff indigenously? And that's true that they'll have that incentive. But they're not able to get there that quickly. The technology is really hard. So the U.S. has this essential technology that is the most important technology in artificial intelligence. And what do you do with that lead, right? Some of that lead you use to develop models like mythos, this new anthropic model, which is like a master key to all the global networks.

It's a major cyber tool. It can unlock all kinds of networks and can be used for cyber offense. If China had that tool before we did, that could have been a problem. The fact that we have at first means we can share it with our allies and we can use it at home to patch all of our systems so they can't be hacked and they can't be compromised. That's one of the values of being ahead in AI. I want to just clarify one thing. We speak of this technology and these advanced chips as being in the United States hands. In fact, they're manufactured mostly in Taiwan.

Is that true? That's right. Is that by Taiwanese companies? Entirely. So they're not directly under U.S. control then. No. So, Nvidia designs these chips, but they're manufactured by a company called TSM by and large, which is in Taiwan. And Taiwan has a number of these TSMC sites.

We called them FABs. And these fabs are where all these chips come from. And so there's a finite number that are produced, more of being produced in America because TSM set up a plant in Arizona and it's got more plants coming. But the world's AI buildout depends entirely on the island of Taiwan. Which makes Taiwan even more important to the United States than it obviously has been for all these decades. Absolutely. Let's talk about the Taiwan issue.

I mean, the stakes for China here are, you know, they're not just economic and military. There's a deep emotional issue here, isn't there? Yeah, Taiwan is sort of the unfinished Chinese civil war. You know, back when the civil war in China ended, there were two sides, the Communist Party of China and the Nationalist Party. And the Nationalist Party was in charge, but they were overthrown by the Communist Party. And the Nationalists fled China, and they went to the island of Taiwan. They set up shop there. And they actually governed fairly successfully. Taiwan became a major wealthy economy and now, again, produces all the AI chips the whole world needs, the most sophisticated production methods in the world. world. But the Chinese side has wanted to end that civil war for a long time. They've wanted Taiwan to be a part of China again under Chinese control. And they're willing to use force to effectuate that outcome. And this is probably the most sensitive issue in the U.S.-China relationship. And when I served in government, it was probably one of the most sensitive issues we ever dealt with so much time when into thinking about how we talk about Taiwan and what we do

for Taiwan to prevent the unthinkable, which is a possible war over Taiwan. Right. And China has had an enormous military built up over the last few years. And I've read that they've decided that 2027 will be the target year for them to be prepared to invade Taiwan if they want to. Is this right? Right. So, you know, American intelligence officials have made public the fact that President Xi has told the People's Liberation Army to be ready to take Taiwan by military force, even over U.S. opposition, by 2027. That doesn't mean they're going to take action. in 2027, but they want to be ready by that year. And there's a lot of things they can do besides invading Taiwan. They can blockade it. They can quarantine it. They can use cyber attacks to make it much harder for society to function. They can limit the flow of essential inputs to Taiwan's economy. And my guess is some combination of all those instruments will be used one day to try to push Taiwan to give up and basically agree to negotiations to rejoin China.

There fears that, you know, Trump, who has certainly has not been a hawk on Taiwan's defense, that in this discussion with President Xi might cut back on the United States commitments to Taiwan in return for trade and economic concessions. There is that fear. There's three things, I think, that President Xi might ask of President Trump, maybe four. The first is he'd ask President Trump to change our official Taiwan policy, our declaratory policy, which we haven't changed in 40 years. That would be a big deal. What he wants us to do basically is say that we oppose Taiwan's independence. We currently say we don't support it. He wants us to be even stronger and say we oppose it. And he also wants us to basically say that we support Taiwan unifying with China. The Chinese would use the term reunification.

We use the term unifying because we don't want to make big claims about the past. And the Trump administration has indicated it's not going to make those concessions, but the president is the president. The third thing I think that President Xi wants from President Trump is a decision to be. pre-negotiate or maybe talk a little bit in advance about the weapons that we sell to Taiwan. They want to be consulted on that. Now, again, for 40-plus years, our policy has been that our arms sales to Taiwan aren't for China to interfere with or not for China to approve or disapprove. And more fundamentally, they are determined both their quantity and the quality of them

by the threat that comes from China. If China was less threatening to Taiwan and they've dialed up the threat in the last few years, you know, that would be a different story. And then finally, it's possible that, you know, President Xi will want President Trump to meet certain Taiwanese politicians, but I think the Chinese side hopes will become leaders in Taiwan or win the next Taiwan presidential election and then pursue negotiations, perhaps, with China. Yeah, you know, the language of this is so fascinating. You know, there's this debate over whether you can support or oppose or be silent on the issue of Taiwan's independence, when, in fact, the reality is it's been an independent island for decades, right? Yeah, and you raise an interesting point.

I mean, the contorted language on Taiwan policy is one of the most bizarre and Byzantine things that the U.S. government and the Chinese government deal with in foreign policy. But the language is contorted because every side is trying to paper over a reality that neither side wants to fully accept. And so for that reason, words matter enormously in Taiwan policy. And I'll just say, again, when I had the chance to serve, I think the most times I got complaints from the Chinese side, the most times I was called up and yelled at on Taiwan-related issues, It wasn't necessarily over some really substantive issue of trade or security. It was often over the words that we were using or the actions that Taiwan was taking that made it look more and more like an independent country. For China, that was really objectionable.

There is one very specific issue related to Taiwan that's pending, and that is that, as I understand it, there's a $14 billion package of military assistance to Taiwan that was approved by Congress and has not really gotten the go-ahead. from President Trump. Might he either make a commitment or make a commitment to scaling it back? I mean, how might that figure into these conversations? You know, I think for the Chinese side,

the possibility of a major arms sale right before or right after a summit with President Xi, it's embarrassing for President Xi. And so they say to the U.S. side, don't do the sale. Don't do the sale ever, but also don't especially do it in these times. The problem, I think, in part,

is that President Trump is likely to meet with President Xi four times this year. This is the first meeting, but there might be three others. So if you try to carve out a one-month window around every summit, pretty soon you have no windows where you could even do this sale. And the sale, by the way, is important, right? I mean, one of the things that the U.S. can do is make it easier for Taiwan to defend itself the way that Ukraine is defending itself. And if Taiwan can do that, maybe that causes us to achieve a degree of peace and stability in the Taiwan straight. The core goal of American policy on Taiwan is peace and peace and instability into Taiwan straight. We're not pushing for an independent Taiwan. We're not

pushing for unification between China and Taiwan. We kind of want things to just keep going as they are because the whole world depends on Taiwan. Right now, the AI buildup depends on Taiwan. But by the way, we didn't talk about this. But if China invaded Taiwan or if it blockaded it, the damage to the global economy is $5 to $10 trillion, an amount greater in terms of the percentage of global GDP than the Great Depression. This is really important. So the U.S. has to get its language right. It has to get its diplomacy with China right. It has to encourage Taiwan to be responsible, but it also has to help Taiwan defend itself. And so these kinds of arms packages are very important for that.

We need to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Rush Doshi. He worked on China policy at the National Security Council. He's now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. We'll be right back after this short break. This is fresh air. This is fresh air, and we're talking about U.S. China relations as President Trump meets with Xi Jinping at a summit in Beijing. Our guest is Rush Doshi. He worked on China policy at the National Security Council. He's now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

We recorded our interview yesterday. You know, this summit was postponed because Trump said he needed to be home during the Iran War. That's not resolved. What is China's posture on the conflict in Iran? I think the Iran question is very challenging for both sides to discuss. I mean, it is highly awkward that the U.S. president will be in Beijing at the same time that the U.S. military is blockading Beijing ships from going in and out of the Strait of Hormuz. That's unprecedented. We've never seen anything like that.

At the same time, the Trump administration wants a few things from China. They want China to stop buying Iranian oil. They want China to stop selling to Iran what they call dual-use goods, goods that are useful for the civilian economy but also the military. And they want China to stop sending weapons to Iran as well. And a lot of China's drone and missile capabilities have benefited Iran and allowed it to do more in the Strait of Hormuz, ironically, to the detriment of China's ability to access oil through the Strait of Hormuz. So the question here is, what is the endgame? you know, in what world will Iran say, okay, I'll stop blockading the strait? And what deal will the U.S. be prepared to accept? As in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China's in the background. There is no successful Russian military operation in Ukraine without Chinese support, particularly for the Russian industrial base. And there's no credible Iranian capability to blockade the strait without Chinese support. And so how the U.S. pushes China on these issues is a question that all of comes up at the summits. And China, for its part, is not always willing to do business with us on those questions.

Yeah. So what do you think is going to happen here? You know, I think the Trump administration has signaled that they're going to put heavy pressure on China, on this Iran issue. But as we talked about earlier, China has a lot of leverage, and they have a lot of cars that they can play, and the U.S. may not be able to force China to the table over Iran. And at the same time, China feels like it can bide some time. The U.S. government is now embroiled in another Middle East quagmire. It doesn't look great if your hope is to basically increase your focus on issues like China. We can't do that. We're focused on Iran.

But there's a second element here too, which is, you know, China imports maybe five million barrels a day of oil from the Strait of Hormuz. But they've got a reserve of about 1.2 to 1.4 billion barrels in China. And they might be able to weather this shortage for some period of time, maybe even longer. then the U.S. is willing to weather high prices. So that is kind of the challenge that the U.S. faces. The leverage that President Trump has may not be enough. The Chinese may be willing to wait him out. And they're not really inclined to pressure the Iranians on these issues. They might ask them to come to the table for a ceasefire, but they're not going to push the Iranians to accept ceasefire terms that the Trump administration is putting forward that are far more onerous

on the nuclear and other questions. You know, I think you said that Iran is not able to credibly control the Strait of Hormuz without help from China. Is that right, even in the current moment? I think that Iran's military ability to project power into the strait is directly tied to the support it's received historically from China. So take drones. The Iranian drone production capability is dependent on Chinese parts and take missiles. The Iranian missile program is largely a product of collaboration with China and continue. support from China. Now, China is not entirely ideological. It can be pragmatic. They understand

the Strait of Hormuz must be reopened. They don't want to see Gulf countries get bombed by Iran and see that oil and gas infrastructure get destroyed. They don't want to see that happen. And so there should be space for a deal here, but it's not going to be easy to get there. And trust on all sides is very limited. You know, China has, in recent years, come to see the United States as a power and decline. President Xi has said this on a number of occasions. Do you think the recent U.S. military efforts in Venezuela and Iran have changed that perception one way or the other? It's a very important question. And in my book, The Long Game, I talk a lot about, I go into Chinese sources and material from the party speeches by Xi that are not public or by previous leaders as well. I want to trace their thinking about the U.S. and also their activity.

And one of the conclusions I make in the book is that one of the most important variables for China is its perception of American power. And they have a lot of euphemisms, polite euphemisms. They use in texts within the Chinese Communist Party. They might talk about multipolarity. They want to see multipolarity. That's a euphemism for American decline. Or they might want to see the international balance of forces get more balanced. That's another euphemism for American decline.

If you have a switchboard with lights and each euphemism is a light, all the euphemisms are lighting up right now because they think the U.S. is in a hurtling decline right now. They are more confident than they've ever been. And you can see that in the speeches. You know, President Xi is fond of saying the East is rising and the West is declining. You know, in addition to that, you've got top Chinese Communist Party officials, like the head of their ministry of state security. Think of the CIA, the FBI, the NSA all rolled up into one. They scan the international horizon. They make judgments about how the world is going.

The Ministry of State Security's minister gave this speech, which was published in a top Chinese Communist Party journal, which had the strongest rhetoric I've seen on American decline, basically saying America was a completely spent force. Now, your question is maybe America's use of military force has changed the equation a bit. And I think the way the Chinese look at this is the idea that the U.S. is in decline, but as it declines, it may lash out dangerously, the way a drowning person lashes out dangerously. That's the metaphor they will use for us. And so they will see these uses of military force as examples of a dangerously declining America rather than a gracefully declining America. I think they've also taken a lesson from this. They've recognized that America is the only country that can basically close any choke point or threaten any ship around the world given its global naval capability.

China wants to get there, but it's not there yet. Let's take one more break here. We are speaking with Rush Doshi. He worked on China policy at the National Security Council. He's now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. We'll be back after this break. This is fresh air. This is fresh air, and we're talking about U.S. China relations as President U.S.

Trump meets with Xi Jinping in Beijing. Our guest is Rush Doshi. He worked on China policy at the National Security Council, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. We recorded our interview yesterday. You know, we haven't talked about human rights at all. It's probably not going to be talked about much in Beijing, either, is it? Well, you know, President Trump has an interesting set of preferences on the human rights

question. He hasn't always made it a priority. His administration in the first term did make it a priority. But for the president himself, it's not always been top of mind. You know, in the first term, he said that President Xi should go ahead and build the camps in the Xinjiang Autonomous region that were used to intern Uyghurs. It's an ethnic minority group in China. That's Muslim. He also told President Xi he would stand with him on Hong Kong.

So it's not on top of his list, but he does see human rights as transactional. And this is important as well. I think the president will try to get a few things on human rights, but they won't be big changes. And he won't give a big speech to President Xi. What he's going to say is, can you let a few people that you've detained, that are political prisoners, out? Can you let them come to perhaps the United States? One of those people is Jimmy Lai. Jimmy Lai was a dissident, but also a billionaire media tycoon in Hong Kong, who was arrested because his paper was critical of China.

Now, Hong Kong previously had press freedoms, but in the last five to six years, the Chinese government has exerted all kinds of control over Hong Kong. no longer really have free speech there, as Jimmy Lai's experience demonstrates. President Trump will seek to get him out. There are others, American citizens, who are trapped in China. They are exit banned, prevented from leaving, including recently even American children. President Trump will seek perhaps to get them out as well. And the Chinese side may be willing to give that up because for them the costs may not be all that high. So I think if human rights is an issue, it's a transactional issue.

It's an issue for dealmaking, not exactly an issue for a hector. or moral sermons. You know, there was a story recently in The Economist. I think it was a cover story, and the title was Dysfunctional duo. And it said this about the two countries engaged in this summit. One has a leader who treats allies like Patsy's and is ripping apart the institutions that underpinned global stability for decades. The other is an authoritarian regime that bullies its neighbors and is quietly stoking foreign conflicts. It could help defuse.

Worse, the two countries treat their mutual entanglements on technology and trade. as security risks. Does that capture your sense of these guys? Well, you know, it's interesting. I think that China does sometimes have a heavy hand with its neighbors, particularly on issues that are important to it. People forget, I think five years ago, China issued what are called the 14 demands to Australia. They actually came from the Chinese ambassador in Australia. And they all touched on sovereign domestic matters in Australia. For example, whether Australia was willing to buy Chinese telecommunications equipment. or whether it was going to let its own individual states join China's Belt and Road initiative

or have the federal government in Australia sort of be the one to determine whether a state could join or not, or whether or not media should be allowed to criticize China. They basically said all these things that are sovereign domestic matters for Australia are problematic, and we're going to economically penalize you. And they went after Australia in a big way by limiting the goods that they purchased from Australia and going after Australia publicly. That was a big deal. And there are a lot of other cases where China, as it's grown more powerful, has been willing to throw its weight around.

But the U.S. right now is definitely doing that on a whole other scale with its allies. And a big question is, is the damage to the alliance structure permanent or temporary? Earlier, you and I were talking a little bit about, you know, whether China sees the U.S. in decline. And I said that they do. One reason why is they think our democracy isn't really working that well. And other reason why, is they think economically our industrial base is hollowing out. A third reason, though, is that they think we are walking away from what is our biggest asymmetric leverage, which is our alliances. And if you add up American alliances, they are really quite formidable.

And one of the arguments that I've been putting forward with my former boss, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, is that China outscales the U.S. on a lot of metrics. The U.S. alone can't outscale China. But if you add up the U.S. with all its allies and partners, we collectively outscale China. China on every metric that counts. And the reason that matters is because if we hang together, then, we can shape a world more conducive the way we see things. And it'll be better for balancing a very powerful and very capable China. Yeah. And there have been stories saying that some of the so-called middle power, Canada, Brazil, South Korea, India, other countries are looking, you know, to make alliances and deals more aggressively because they find the U.S. and China unreliable allies.

It's a good thing for other countries to reach out to each other and find ways to partner with each other. But one thing that I will say here is that the middle power story isn't going to build enough scale to compete with China. Again, China is two times the global share of manufacturing that the U.S. has. It's three times our power generation. It's three times our car production. It's something like 11 to 13 times our steel production. It's 20 times our cement production. And it makes up, you know, half of a whole host of really critical industries.

It's half of all global chemical production. half of all shipbuilding, and it makes all the critical minerals and drones and key parts for consumer electronics that the world relies on. How do you deal with that kind of concentration, that kind of monopolistic concentration? You can't do it alone, and you can't do it with middle power coalitions. In the end, the U.S. has to be the anchor for those allies and partners, and today it might be hard, but I have faith that this two shall pass, and eventually it'll be possible for the U.S. to work with those allies to build that kind of collective scale and make sure that we all end up more prosperous and secure for it. Really interesting. Rush Doshi, thank you so much for speaking

with us. Thank you for the opportunity. Rush Doshi worked on China policy at the National Security Council. He's now an assistant professor in Georgetown School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. We recorded our interview Wednesday morning. If you'd like to catch up on interviews you've missed, like our conversation with Nathan Lane, currently starring on Broadway in Death of a Salesman, or with Will Sharp, who appeared in The White Lotus and stars as Mozart in the new TV series Amadeus. Check out our podcast. You'll find lots of fresh air interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch,

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