The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Scared China Into Playing ‘Nice’ With the US Again

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

The “experts” were wrong again. For months, Americans were told that the U.S. was embroiled in a losing “trade war” with China, preventing the two world powers from striking any sort of deal. However, in the face of this supposed adversity, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump inked a trade and economic deal, which included key Chinese concessions: agreeing to buy more U.S. soybeans, ease export controls on rare earth minerals, and crack down on fentanyl production chemicals. “In other words, China is trying to be nice to us because it's afraid. Because it understands that the United States always had the potential, as a free, consensual society, to be more dynamic, stronger, and have a much greater role in the world” and that the only thing holding us back was Joe Biden’s ineffectual leadership, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.” 👉 This episode is sponsored by the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. Learn more: ⁠https://go.pepperdine.edu/dailysignal⁠ 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1 👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com 👉The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: ⁠https://secured.dailysignal.com/⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. Donald Trump just met recently with Chinese leader Qi Jingping. They were trying to resolve the growing tensions over trade and tariffs. The United States did pretty well. We agreed to lower tariffs. They're still going to be nominally 47% on incoming Chinese goods, but China in return is going to drop tariffs against us. It's going to buy U.S. soybeans, and it's going to stop its blockade or embargo of rare earth materials.

And so there was a give and take. But the question I have is why now, after all of this rhetoric of resistance, why is it willing to even talk to Donald Trump? I thought we were going to be in a trade war. I thought China was winning. The answer is that I guess Donald Trump exposed China for what it is. At Capital One, we're more than just a credit card company. We're people just like you who believe in the power of yes. Yes to new opportunities.

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at Capital One.ca.ca slash yes. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson for the Daily Signal. Donald Trump just met recently with Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and they had a mini-summit of sorts, not a long one, but they were trying to resolve the growing tensions over trade and tariffs. And we'll let the analysts and the pundits sort out

who won or who lost, but I think most people feel the United States did pretty well. In other words, although we agreed to lower tariffs, they're still going to be nominally 47 percent on incoming Chinese goods, maybe smaller or less severe in certain areas. But China in return is going to drop tariffs against us, restrictions about sending things into China, buying U.S. it's going to buy U.S. soybeans, and it's going to stop its blockade or embargo of rare earth materials. And so there was a give and take. But the question I have is why now is China willing, after all of this rhetoric of resistance, why is it willing to even talk to Donald Trump?

I thought we were going to be in a trade war. I thought China was winning. And the answer is that I guess Donald Trump exposed China for what it is. We had been told by people on the right and left if you gave China leeway space, exemptions, forget about them cheating on copyrights, patents. forget about the manipulating currency dumping product below the price of production, cost of production. Forget about their Belt and Road neo-imperialistic mercantile system. Forget all about that. They were even more insidious.

The way that they transfer technology that they don't have and cannot produce is to send over 300,000 students and hope that one or two or three percent, several hundred or several thousand, would then engage in U.S. industry, universities, corporations, and send that expertise back, and they have been doing that for 30 or 40 years. There's another thing they do. They look and encourage DEI. They really think it's a great idea that we have dropped over the last five or six years meritocratic standards because they had done it in their own past.

They know what Mao did. He took the intellectuals. He took the engineers, the scientific community, put them out in the field and treat them like peasants. This was his cultural revolution. Seventy million people died, but more importantly, merit was not important. Ideology, that is communist ideology of the Chinese sort, made people get promoted or fired. And the result was China's economy imploded and people starve. And China thinks, gosh, this is really good that the United States is doing this.

We've got to really encourage how people that are Asian, people who are non-wine are maltreated by the U.S. They also did it with the open border. They encourage it. They sent fentanyl in there that killed 70,000 people since 1999, probably when we first started to be aware and to document these accidental deaths and suicide by fentanyl. 600,000 Americans have died. That's as many people that died in the Civil War. and China was supplying the raw product to the Mexican cartels. Maybe the biggest con they pulled off against the United States in particular in the Western General

was the solar wind green agenda global warming con. In other words, they captured the solar panel and the wind turbine market by dumping product below the cost of production, putting their Western rivals out of business, and then shipping vast amounts of green energy devices to the West while they did what? They built coal plants. They built nuclear plants. They built oil, hydroelectric plants. Yes, they had some green energy.

But the point I'm making, they wanted us to have high cost, subsidized, and limited amounts of energy while they did just the opposite and would have more fossil fuels that they're just. disposal for cheaper and more efficient energy and would further dominate the world global market. I could go on with Wuhan and their stonewalling about the origins and nature of the COVID virus. But here's the point. We were in a virtual war with China. They were ignoring any entreaty or effort to adjudicate with the Biden administration, with the Obama administration. Trump comes along and says, these are going to be your tariff. These no more fentanyl and blah-da, we have a big blowout, and suddenly China, I think, backs down and wants to talk. Why? Well, because we have a president that took out the Iranian nuclear facilities.

We have a president that said to Israel, you were attacked on October 7th. Deal with Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis as you see fit. We have a president who said to Vladimir Putin during his first term, do not dare leave your borders and who this time will adjudicate that war. We have a president that's achieved six or seven ceasefire all over the globe. We have a president. We have an economy now where inflation is only about 3%. GDP may be over 3.5 at the end of the year. We were told that the tariffs would create a recession and crash the stock market. The stock market is at all-time highs, record highs. In other words, we have a very robust economy.

We are preeminent on the world stage. Our military does not have a shortfall, as it did in 2023 or 40,000 soldiers. We are completely met all of our recruitment. We're looking at all new types of weaponry, smaller companies, drones, artificial intelligence, robotics. It's a very dynamic time, both in the civilian sphere and then our military. Add it all up and China says to itself, oh my gosh, we thought that the Americans were asleep, we kept poking it and we woke this dragon up. And all of a sudden they think, you know what, we better be careful about buying farmland next to U.S. military bases.

I thought they didn't care or they were too weak to stop us. We got to be careful about sending balloons across the United States. They'll shoot it down in two seconds. We've got to be very careful about cyber warfare. We won't go to Alaska and dress down and insult their diplomats like we did with Sullivan and Anthony Blinken. In other words, China is trying to be nice to us because it's afraid, because it understands that the United States always had the potential as a free consensual society to be more dynamic, stronger, and have a much greater role in the world. And then by our own volition, by our own lack of confidence, by our own divisiveness, we adopted policies that China encouraged because they knew they would weaken us. And suddenly, that's all gone with the wind.

It's as if the United States said that China, you think you're winning and you think you're going to take advantage of us. We're in a renaissance. And all we have to say is not yet, China, not yet. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.