The Trump administration is likely to announce sanctions and trade restrictions targeting more Chinese companies, government entities and officials on human rights and U.S. national security grounds in the last 10 weeks of his administration, according to the Axios news website, citing unnamed officials. For his part, a spokesperson for the National Security Council told Axios that future U.S. presidents will find that “a historic move to unseat President Trump would be political suicide.”
If the Axios report is true, the Trump administration’s “final madness” on the China issue should have two main purposes: one is to dig a hole for the next Democratic administration, to compress the space for Biden to improve relations with China in advance, to tie his hands and feet, so as to consolidate the current Republican administration’s U.S. policy of encirclement of China. The shift in China policy is the biggest “diplomatic legacy” of the Trump team, which wants to prevent a backlash against the U.S. China policy after they leave.
The second is to prepare for the next presidential election in 2024. If the Biden administration continues along the current U.S. China policy line, the China-U.S. confrontation will involve their enormous energy, the Democratic Party’s emphasis on anti-epidemic, gas changes and other issues is difficult to advance, and the new administration will continue to be in the shadow of “Trumpism”. Biden even in the China policy on technical adjustment, the Republican Party can also be used to do words, attacking its “weakness for China”, and in two years after the midterm elections and four years after the election to continue to use China-related issues to make waves.
According to U.S. media reports and other analysis, the Trump team in the remaining time is most likely to create high exposure, the U.S. side and controllable conflict, to buttress their tough atmosphere towards China, which in the human rights issue is Washington’s most skilled manipulation. In addition, Pompeo and others are likely to say more ruthless and extreme words to China, last week he said “Taiwan has never been part of China” is a bottom-breaking arrogant move.
However, the Trump team has too many of these actions, and their actual impact is already diminishing. China is clearly well prepared for the risk of variability in the post-election transition period, and whatever Washington’s moves, they will not be unprepared encounters for Beijing.
Since the Trump administration’s ouster is irreversible, and the world knows they intend to do some damage before they leave, the international impact they can have by taking on China at this point will be significantly weaker than before the election. For some showy provocations, Beijing can air them out. For those attacks that have the potential to do substantial damage to us, we need to deal with them head-on and make them feel ashamed and embarrassed.
The world knows the Trump administration is likely to mess up next, and this is their lowest point of support, both domestically and internationally, so no matter how tough they appear to be, they are actually at their weakest right now. We do not take the initiative to provoke them at this time, not to rub salt into the wound, but there is no reason to their “final madness” fear.
Although the U.S. media reported that the Trump administration is not prepared to make a big move in the direction of the Taiwan Strait in the last 10 weeks, but we still can not take it lightly. If the U.S. and Taiwan collude to suddenly make unacceptable operations in the Taiwan Strait at this time, we must resolutely countermeasure and punish the other side to make it lose cleanly.
The US is a real tiger in the world, but it is a paper tiger when it comes to China’s coastal waters and touches China’s core interests. With just over two months left in its term, if this US administration still wants to show off and boast in China’s direction, all they will get is embarrassment and loss of face. China is not an honor roll that the American political elite can just paint over.
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