What is the Trump administration’s China policy? It’s not easy to get a straight answer. Depending on who you ask, you might hear “America First,” a broad term that can be interpreted in a variety of ways; or you might hear that the ambiguity is the point, and it’s an advantage over the self-imposed red lines and policy buzzwords of the Biden era.

On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Kurt Campbell, who ran Asia policy for the Biden administration and served as deputy secretary of state. Campbell and other aides of former U.S. President Joe Biden coined “invest, align, compete” as a slogan for their China plans, a strategy that included planks such as the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and a network of alliances. U.S. President Donald Trump has since unwound several of those policies. In a recent New York Times article, Campbell argued that Trump’s approach to China was “full of contradictions” but that his unpredictability had both advantages and disadvantages.

What is the Trump administration’s China policy? It’s not easy to get a straight answer. Depending on who you ask, you might hear “America First,” a broad term that can be interpreted in a variety of ways; or you might hear that the ambiguity is the point, and it’s an advantage over the self-imposed red lines and policy buzzwords of the Biden era.

On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Kurt Campbell, who ran Asia policy for the Biden administration and served as deputy secretary of state. Campbell and other aides of former U.S. President Joe Biden coined “invest, align, compete” as a slogan for their China plans, a strategy that included planks such as the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and a network of alliances. U.S. President Donald Trump has since unwound several of those policies. In a recent New York Times article, Campbell argued that Trump’s approach to China was “full of contradictions” but that his unpredictability had both advantages and disadvantages.

Subscribers can watch our full discussion on the video box atop this page. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript. Campbell is presently chairman and co-founder of the Asia Group.

Ravi Agrawal: So, what are the contradictions you see in Trump’s China policy?

Kurt Campbell: Let me just start with the things that we think we know. One of the most interesting things is that President Trump clearly is attracted to authoritarians. We saw in the first term his deep attraction to [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping]. We also know that we haven’t seen a chief executive in the United States that, frankly, has this much latitude to make decisions about China unconstrained by the right wing or by Congress more generally. He has an administration that is a big tent when it comes to China: He has some of the most pro-business, “let’s cut a deal” kind of guys, along with some of the hardest of the hard-liners. And they fight it out inside the government.

The biggest contradictions, however, are at the core of what President Trump seeks. In some instances, it appears that he’s seeking to build a completely different kind of relationship with China and believes that commercial deals which benefit him and the United States are the right approach. At other times, his approach suggests that this is a pause, that he’s seeking to take a timeout so we can build reserves of critical minerals and build up our own military. My sense is that this ambiguity is designed not just to keep China off balance, but frankly, to keep elements in American society guessing what President Trump’s ultimate outcomes and desires are.

RA: You used the term ambiguity. And then there’s “strategic ambiguity,” a fairly wonkish term, which in the context of the U.S.-China relationship refers to an intentional uncertainty over whether Washington would help Taiwan militarily were China to attack it. You wrote recently in the New York Times that Trump “has taken strategic ambiguity to a profound new level.” What did you mean by that?

KC: The idea here is that the strategic ambiguity, as it has applied to Taiwan, was: Would the United States, in a moment of crisis, come to Taiwan’s aid? The way that we’ve managed that historically is by being careful about directly saying which direction we would lean toward and also urging both sides to play it cool and to understand the benefits of continued existence of the status quo, of Taiwan’s ability to live in peace and prosperity.

What I’d suggest is that this larger strategic ambiguity really comes down to: What would President Trump do if the chips were down in a larger framework in the Indo-Pacific? Would he side with China? We’ve seen some ambivalence and uncertainty in the situation, for instance, between Russia and Ukraine. Many of our allies in the Indo-Pacific want to be reassured that the United States continues to support the traditional alliance structures. That means our partnerships with Japan and South Korea and Australia and our newfound friends such as India. Behind closed doors, there is some anxiety about just where President Trump........

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