A lot has happened since U.S. President Donald Trump last visited Beijing nearly a decade ago, but one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

Trump heads to the Chinese capital on Wednesday in a trip expected to be heavy on optics, focused on peaceful coexistence, business deals with big dollar amounts attached, and praise for Chinese President Xi Jinping—all hallmarks of Trump’s last visit in 2017.

A lot has happened since U.S. President Donald Trump last visited Beijing nearly a decade ago, but one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

Trump heads to the Chinese capital on Wednesday in a trip expected to be heavy on optics, focused on peaceful coexistence, business deals with big dollar amounts attached, and praise for Chinese President Xi Jinping—all hallmarks of Trump’s last visit in 2017.

In the interregnum between the two trips, however, Trump dialed up the antagonism with a years-long trade war starting in July 2018, a years-long global crusade against Chinese tech company Huawei, an effort to ban Chinese social media platform TikTok, and export controls to prevent Chinese companies from gaining access to advanced U.S. technology.

And, of course, there was the COVID-19 outbreak in China in late 2019—a watershed moment that seemed to cement Trump’s ire toward Beijing.

“It was the onset of COVID, in particular the realization that the pandemic had completely tanked the global economy and would most likely ruin the president’s chances of being reelected,” said Liza Tobin, managing director at the geopolitical risk advisory firm Garnaut Global. As a China director at the National Security Council in Trump’s first term, Tobin had a front-row seat to Trump’s hawkish turn. “He blamed Xi Jinping for not containing the pandemic earlier, then decided that this relationship isn’t working and it’s time to decouple,” she added. “And so at that point, he empowered his staff to pursue decoupling policies, and that’s what we did for the rest of the term.”

Trump was right about the reelection part. He was voted out in November 2020, replaced by Democratic President Joe Biden, who came into the White House promising to undo the damage Trump had done to Washington’s global standing. On China policy, however, Biden stayed the course—even ratcheting up many of the technology export controls, introducing new policies such as a ban on Chinese vehicles, and actually signing a TikTok ban into law.

“We recognized over the course of the Trump years that the watchword of engagement had given way to the watchword of competition as a core organizing principle of the U.S.-China relationship,” said Jake Sullivan, who served as national security advisor in the Biden administration and a key architect of its China policy. “We spent the Trump years formulating a strategy that would allow us to compete effectively while also being able to manage the competition effectively,” he added.

As a result, a bipartisan consensus that China is the primary adversary and national security threat to the United States has coalesced in Washington over the past six years, animating Democrats and Republicans alike.

However, it’s not clear that it still animates Trump. Over the past year, the Trump administration has green-lit the sale to China of some advanced semiconductor chips made by tech giant Nvidia (though no chips have actually been sold yet), cut key personnel at the Commerce Department focused on the technology threats posed by China, and dramatically slashed his National Security Council—including firing more than a dozen China hands. He also flipped on TikTok, signing a deal for the social media platform to continue operating in the United States that allows Chinese parent company ByteDance to retain a stake and control of its algorithm.

Trump has also continued to lavish praise on Xi, calling him an “amazing man” in remarks to reporters on Monday and marveling at how he rules China “with a pretty iron fist.” Trump also said (not for the first time) that he would discuss U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan with Xi when they meet, which would break the second of the “Six Assurances” to Taiwan that have defined........

© Foreign Policy