The Trump administration’s most important foreign policy legacy is its much-needed response to China’s economic warfare against the United States. From trade countermeasures to export controls, these policies were so manifestly in the national interest that even the Biden administration has continued many of them. As China’s belligerence increases, however, concerns have grown in Washington that such measures could make war more likely. The reality is quite the opposite: reducing American reliance on China and preventing China’s technological dominance will help avoid conflict.

Though it has continued and even expanded some of former President Trump’s economic and tech policies towards China, the Biden administration has watered down its overall approach due to fears that aggressively protecting the U.S. economy may be too provocative. To “manage” competition with China but avoid “veering into conflict,” the Biden administration has revived the Obama-era policy of engagement, sending Cabinet secretaries to Beijing to warn China in advance of U.S. action, and recreating failed bureaucratic dialogues. This has led to counterproductive national security tradeoffs, such as Treasury Secretary Yellen assuring Chinese leadership that restrictions on U.S. investment into Chinese military technologies would have no “fundamental impact on… the investment climate for China.” Of course, that should be the entire purpose of such restrictions.

Some Republican China hawks share concerns about provoking China, worrying that economic and technology sanctions could risk conflict. One such concern is that tariffs, export controls, and subsidies could invite China to use force if they are undertaken from a position of military weakness, and that the U.S. should avoid actions that could be perceived as efforts to “strangle” China’s economy, until the U.S. achieves a more favorable level of military readiness. Push too hard now, back China into a corner economically, and we could end up in a fight we’re ill-prepared to win, the thinking goes.

These concerns shouldn’t dissuade the U.S. from continuing the technological and economic measures pioneered by the Trump administration, for three reasons. First, the U.S. is not attempting to “strangle” China’s economy. Second, even if Beijing believes the U.S. is trying to constrain China’s economic growth, these efforts are still more likely to deter, rather than incite, China’s aggression. Third, China is already seeking to decouple from the United States, from a position of technological dominance; addressing that break now will better allow America to set the terms of the divorce.     

The U.S. Isn’t “Strangling” China

Skeptics have cited U.S. embargoes against Imperial Japan before the Pearl Harbor attack as an example of how economic measures can provoke an adversary to use force. In the late 1930s, the United States began restricting exports to Japan that could have military applications. Within a few years, these embargoes expanded to basic commodities, notably energy sources. By 1941, the United States had completely severed economic relations with Japan and severely restricted its access to desperately needed oil.  

The U.S. bilateral relationship with China today could not be more different. The United States and China are still heavily connected by bilateral and regional trade flows, and China is still heavily dependent on the U.S. economy. China remains the United States’ largest trading partner outside North America, and the U.S. remains China’s most critical export market, by far. The U.S. government routinely compromises its own interests to avoid major disruptions to the U.S.-China economic relationship, failing to enforce reciprocity for China’s mistreatment of U.S. firms, or even prohibit its own citizens from investing in Chinese military companies.

Compared to other major adversaries such as Russia, Iran, and North Korea, which are subject to economy-wide sanctions, investment bans, and sovereign-debt trading restrictions, China enjoys comparatively favorable treatment.

And there is a vast difference between targeted defensive measures such as semiconductor export controls and the general trade embargo levied on Imperial Japan. The U.S. is decidedly not undertaking a general effort to constrain China’s economic growth.

Reducing Dependencies on China will Contribute to Deterrence

Even if Xi Jinping actually believes the U.S. is attempting to strangle China, he often acts more aggressively in the face of conciliation and weakness. Even as the Biden administration’s superficial diplomatic engagement has revived military talks with China, the two countries are closer to war today than they were under Trump. Biden’s own top Asia hands, Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, explained why in 2018: “China has been more willing to make concessions in response to the Trump administration’s threats of punitive action… than was often the case during the preceding decades of intense and respectful strategic engagement.”

Xi’s most belligerent moves have come when the U.S. signals risk-aversion and supplicates for cooperation. China militarized the South China Sea following Xi’s 2015 White House visit, where he falsely claimed that he intended to do no such thing. Military escalations in the Taiwan Strait, and the operation of a spy balloon over the continental United States, occurred after the Biden administration revived engagement policy with China. China’s ongoing military confrontation with the Philippines began after U.S.-China military channels were reopened, ostensibly to reduce military tensions.

In contrast, when the U.S. asserts its interests forcefully, Xi’s responses have been measured, designed to retaliate but not escalate. When the U.S. shut down China’s Houston consulate, China closed the U.S. consulate in Chengdu. China has responded to broad swaths of U.S. sanctions with some ineffectual and symbolic sanctions of its own, but mostly with complaints.

The tariffs, sanctions, export controls, and investment restrictions that the U.S. began in the Trump administration also contribute to military stability by reining in China’s exploitation of U.S. resources. China is leveraging U.S. capital and expertise to bolster its military. China’s spy balloons have used U.S. satellite communications. DoD contracting money helped build China’s hypersonic missiles. Western investors pour billions into the development of China’s dual-use capabilities. We owe it to the U.S. servicemembers who may one day confront these capabilities to stop helping China produce them.

Restoring military balance will also require the U.S. to reverse the deindustrialization that has eroded America’s defense industrial base and the U.S. economy writ large, and to exorcise dangerous supply chain dependencies on China. It is hard to imagine the U.S. maintaining credible deterrence while struggling to build ships, planes, and missiles, and relying on Chinese supply chains for the basic functioning of the U.S. economy and military.

Entangling the U.S. and Chinese economies did not produce liberalization in China or a stable U.S.-China relationship. To the contrary, America’s overreliance and dependence on China grant Beijing coercive power over the U.S. that encourages its aggression, which only appears to be growing. Xi has said he intends to “tighten international production chains’ dependence on China, forming a powerful… deterrent capability.”  Reducing such dependencies on China will diminish China’s ability to cripple the U.S. economy, improving U.S. deterrence by making it more likely that America will be willing and able to resist China’s belligerence.

Decoupling is Inevitable

The hyperbolic discourse around U.S.-China economic decoupling often presents it as a reckless, unilateral effort by American conservatives, ignoring that decoupling is the Chinese Communist Party’s goal. In truth, decoupling in sensitive economic and technological sectors is inevitable, as Xi has made clear. China is “an inventor and world leader of decoupling,” with Xi personally emphasizing the need to “build a domestic supply system that is independently controllable,” effectuated by the CCP’s subsidies, industrial overcapacity, forced localization requirements, and other industrial policies.

The Trump administration’s China policies were intended to ensure that America emerges from this divorce secure, resilient, and self-reliant, rather than dependent on China and Chinese-dominated industries. Skeptics argue that such efforts are destined to fail, pointing to Russia’s ability to reconstitute its military despite Western sanctions. However, unlike Russia, China is making an explicit bid to dominate numerous critical and emerging technologies, and remains uniquely vulnerable to such measures.   

The question is: Will America accept that decoupling—in at least some sectors—is mutual, and act from a position of strength while we still can? Will we reindustrialize in a way that makes the U.S. more resistant to coercion and better able to reduce China’s risk tolerance for military adventurism? Or will we allow this inevitable decoupling to play out on China’s terms?

A Stronger America Can Better Deter China

Ultimately, continuing the economic statecraft pioneered by the Trump administration and preventing China from dominating key technologies and supply chains is essential for maintaining a credible deterrence. Abandoning efforts to limit China’s access to the U.S. capital and technology fueling its military ambitions would undermine our ability to deter China’s belligerence. The threat is not theoretical: China is already attempting to exploit these overreliances and degrade U.S. military strength by restricting exports of gallium, geranium, and antimony, key inputs for defense production.

Concerns that assertive U.S. economic statecraft could jeopardize military deterrence are understandable, particularly given well-founded concerns about the increasingly tenuous military balance, a chronic under prioritization of the Indo-Pacific region, and the hollowing out of our defense-industrial base. These are legitimate national security emergencies, and there is no substitute for hard power. But China’s unfettered access to U.S. capital and technology only exacerbates these problems. The Trump administration’s economic policies towards China contributed to deterrence, and should be continued.