Trump has always been soft on China
His TikTok reversal shouldn't be a surprise
The House of Representatives just approved legislation which would either force the social media app TikTok - currently owned by the Chinese company ByteDance - to stop operating in the United States or be sold to an American company. China hawks have been keen on this policy for a long time because they worry that the Chinese government uses TikTok to try to influence American discourse. This seems to be a legitimate concern - TikTok has about 150 million users in the United States, and U.S. intelligence agencies think that Beijing monkeys with its algorithm in order to try to influence U.S. elections and spread the Chinese government’s point of view.
Banning TikTok would be a big deal, both because it would promote the ongoing fracturing of the internet into separate sovereign spheres, and because it would really annoy a lot of voters. On the other hand, the world has experienced a dizzying change in its information environment over the past few decades, and most of it has not been subject to either democratic approval or effective regulation. The growth of social media has had a profound impact on society and politics, and we do not have to just accept the consequences of whatever is wrought by the tech bros - whether those bros are Americans from Silicon Valley or Chinese government agents. TikTok stands out as a clear case where action is needed, and I think
is right when he writes the following:Here’s the analogy I like to use. It’s 1975 and a state-owned Soviet firm wants to buy CBS. What happens? Well, what happens is they wouldn’t be allowed to. The FCC would block it. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US or its predecessors would block it. If they didn’t have the power, congress would write a new law. And even if it wasn’t CBS, if it was a chain of local TV affiliate stations, the outcome would be the same.
Social media operates very differently to traditional media, which is why TikTok was able to get a foothold in the first place. Rather than making a very visible purchase of a bunch of infrastructure, nowadays you can set up a new mass media channel just by getting approval to sell an app in the app store. It runs off existing infrastructure, doesn’t necessarily displace existing media, and is generally less obtrusive. But now TikTok has grown into the behemoth that it is, it’s right that it is attracting regulatory attention. That’s why Joe Biden and a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives support a bill to force its sale or banning.
You know who very vocally doesn’t support it? Donald Trump.
This is, on the face of it, strange. Trump has a reputation as an uber-hawk on China, and while he was president he signed an executive order which aimed at the same outcome as this House legislation. Why would he now oppose the exact same measure that he once pushed for?
A lot of pundits have decided that the answer is simple: corruption. As Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin laid out in an article titled “Trump’s TikTok reversal suggests his China policy is for sale”:
Although no evidence has emerged of a direct quid pro quo, it’s not so mysterious why Trump might have flipped. Earlier this month, Trump spoke at a conference of the influential conservative organization Club for Growth, after a request by its main benefactor and Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, and announced an end to his feud with the group.
Yass’s firm, notably, has a stake in ByteDance worth more than $20 billion. Yass’s offer of a détente is of direct benefit to Trump and his campaign, as the Club for Growth is now expected to spend millions in the 2024 cycle in support of Trump. That could relieve the financial burden on the former president, who owes more than $400 million in legal penalties. His campaign is reportedly operating on a shoestring budget.
This type of straight corruption would be vintage Trump, and I find it perfectly plausible. But I don’t think that it entirely suffices as an explanation. Although Trump is clearly for sale, his core policy and ideological commitments presumably place some limits on how much he can bend. It’s impossible to imagine, for instance, that you could give Trump enough money to suddenly announce that he now has no problem with immigrants, or with America’s trade deficit with China. He will bend, but within certain limits.
But what’s interesting about the TikTok issue is that, for Trump, opposing an anti-China measure is actually par for the course. The simple fact is that while Trump has a reputation as a generalist anti-China hawk, he has always been narrowly focused on trade issues to the exclusion of almost every other aspect of the U.S.-Chinese relationship. He has suggested that the U.S. would not defend Taiwan, tried to withdraw American troops from Asia, and called Xi Jinping a “great leader”. He withdrew the U.S. from the Trans Pacific Partnership, a massive strategic gain for Beijing, and during his presidency tried to pressure U.S. authorities to deport a Chinese dissident after having conversations with Xi.1
It’s true that over the course of his presidency, Trump came around to a more hardline position, mostly because he was not satisfied with the progress being made on trade issues. And it was in this spirit that he passed the 2020 executive order to try to force the sale of TikTok. It’s worth realizing, though, how fundamentally unserious this order was - it quickly got bogged down in the courts, and Trump did little to try to salvage it. This, again, was vintage Trump - an impulsive move made outside of any strategic framework and with no real plan for following it through.
All of this is a reminder that the stakes of the 2024 election for U.S.-China relations are not what they might seem at first glance.
The Biden administration has a comprehensive, joined-up strategy to attempt to contain the rise of China across multiple fields: security, economics, technology, information. They work with allies and try to actually get things done. Trump, on the other hand, has an absurdly aggressive trade policy and a seeming disregard for any other aspect of the bilateral relationship. He leans heavily into pageantry and spectacle but his stance on fundamental issues shifts around all of the time. Biden offers a kind of stable, comprehensive hawkishness. This approach comes with undeniable dangers, such as starting a cycle of competition which is hard to break.
Trump, by contrast, offers hawkishness on trade issues but little else. He also brings along a degree of volatility and impulsiveness which is a dangerous way to manage a nuclear relationship. The United States and China are going to be locked into security competition in the Asia-Pacific and elsewhere for a long time. Taiwan is going to remain a difficult issue, one with potentially nuclear consequences, for a long time too. Perhaps the most dangerous thing that an American president could do is signal that his positions are changeable and for sale on almost all aspects of the bilateral relationship. Beijing would be forgiven for thinking that if it gives Trump a good trade deal, it can do whatever it wants with TikTok or even Taiwan. That could be a way for both sides to wander into a real disaster - one that will affect the future of the entire world.
For this last point, see Rogin’s book Chaos under Heaven, pp. 57 - 61.