How Trump’s tariffs can generate both economic and political reform in China

Donald Trump may be the unlikeliest candidate imaginable to bring about revolutionary change in China, the world’s most powerful dictatorship. He is also the least interested in pursuing that end, given his deep personal admiration for Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Yet history may have placed him in the position to accomplish inadvertently for China what Ronald Reagan did intentionally for the Soviet Union.

Reagan used soaring rhetoric to express the universal appeal of political freedom and to offer Moscow’s communist leaders a peaceful way out of their geopolitical and geoeconomic trap — America, “the shining city on the hill,” vs. “the Evil Empire” and ”Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

Trump eschews the noble sentiments and missionary zeal that made Reagan a global icon. He generally leaves it to other leaders to run their own countries without interference or preaching from Washington (with one temporary human rights exception noted below). He focuses instead on regaining America’s prosperity and power. As he sees it, U.S. global dominance — Theodore Roosevelt’s “big stick” — will speak for itself and keep adversaries at bay without intrusive adventures like U.S. democracy-implantation and nation-building.

Opponents of U.S. intervention point to Iraq and Afghanistan as negative lessons: removal of obnoxious and dangerous regimes does not assure democratic outcomes. The demise of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan and their replacement with peaceful, flourishing democracies tell a different story, as does the more peaceful overthrow of Soviet-era dictatorships in Eastern and Central Europe and parts of the Mideast and Africa.

Complex issues in diverse situations preclude rote solutions, and military force is the least desirable method of liberating oppressed populations — World War III is not the way to encourage democratic evolution in China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. The nature and degree of regime control and the likelihood of acceptable outcomes must inform any decision to help a population change its government. The most important factor is the commitment of the people themselves to make fundamental change, and the risks and sacrifices they are prepared to accept to achieve their goal.

Americans met that test in 1776, and France willingly came to the aid of the colonies. Ukrainians have proved themselves as committed to defend their own independence from Russian aggression. The Biden administration has supported their resistance but seemingly prefers a stalemate to complete victory for Ukraine.

The other consideration in determining whether intervention is warranted is whether an odious regime carries its evil intentions beyond its own borders and threatens its neighbors, as did the Axis powers in World War II, North Korea in 1950 and Russia in 2008, 2014 and 2022.

There are also unintended, if somewhat predictable, consequences to non-intervention, or to incomplete intervention — that is, without changing the regime at the root of the problem.

After America and its allies stopped North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, they decided in 1953 that permanent removal of Kim Il Sung risked China’s further intervention and a prolonged and expanded war. So Kim was allowed to remain in power, succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Il, and his grandson, Kim Jong Un, each presenting the same ongoing threat to South Korea. Now, as a missile and nuclear power and with the same hateful ideology that motivated two earlier Kim generations, the Pyongyang regime presents an existential threat to Japan and other countries in the region, and endangers the U.S. North Korea is an active member of the new Axis of Evil, directly joining Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

Similarly, after the U.S.-led coalition ejected Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, it left the challenge unresolved with Saddam Hussein still in power, free to continue persecuting his population and pursue weapons of mass destruction to threaten his neighbors — requiring yet another U.S. intervention in 2003 and unforeseen regional consequences.

Trump is opposed to “forever wars,” such as the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan after the September 11 terrorist attack. The last thing he would deliberately undertake now would be a policy to encourage regime change in China. Yet the economic pressures he intends to impose on China through sanctions and expanded tariffs — coming on top of deep domestic discontent with the communist economic system — have the potential to accelerate its demise. The Chinese people demonstrated their fervent desire for political reform when millions protested peacefully in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and hundreds of other cities in June 1989, only to be brutally gunned down by the People’s Liberation Army.

Trump will surely shy away from any action that could contribute to a replay of that horribly tragic episode. But he would have to inform his respected Chinese friend that he has campaign promises to fulfill, and rebuilding the U.S. economy is critical to his commitment to Make America Great Again.

Tariffs against China’s unfair trade practices are an essential component. To Xi’s complaint that tariffs hurt China’s economy and Xi’s domestic popularity, Trump need only remind him that the COVID pandemic he unleashed on the world in 2019 cost a million American lives, halted Trump’s economic progress and contributed to his 2020 reelection loss. Xi’s support for Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine, and for Iran, North Korea and other American enemies, strengthens Trump’s justification for a tough approach to Xi.

Trump can also recount for Xi his destructive intervention in U.S.-North Korean relations in 2019 when the countries were on the verge of a potential denuclearization breakthrough. That possibility had been achieved by Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign that included serious delegitimization of the Pyongyang regime. In three major speeches, Trump laid out the moral and international law case that Kim’s human rights depredations made him unfit to govern. The campaign was working until Xi summoned Kim to China for their very first meeting and apparently pulled him back into line as an intransigent opponent of the U.S. and its anti-proliferation, human rights advocacy.

If Trump is allowed by Elon Musk to stick to his guns, he can apply to China the principle he announced for his domestic opponents: “Success will be our retribution.”

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of The Vandenberg Coalition.

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