Trump's China Policies

The following material is from a forthcoming book.

In 1972, Richard Nixon went to China to inaugurate a new China Policy. His goal was to create an economic bridge between China and the world, and turn the communist country into a more peaceful player. This was certainly a laudable goal, but Nixon missed one important detail: A violent dictatorship cannot change overnight without rethinking its policies. Nixon was a pragmatist (by admission) who thought he could develop an open-door policy with China through inducements that influenced China to become more like the USA.

Under Nixon’s initiative, no longer would America try to cajole the communist party to be kinder and more respectful toward its people, at least not at first. A new day had dawned, thought Nixon, when the U.S.A. offered to help China come into the 20th century by opening up U.S. markets to Chinese companies and facilitating lucrative trade deals with China on behalf American companies that wanted to move production facilities there (to counter union high wages in the USA). Nixon hoped that these new policies would influence the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (that had been fascistically controlling the winners and losers in China) to desist from its violent revolutionary and anti-capitalist policies. (What Nixon had accomplished, however, was opening the door for China to exploit American economic freedoms and intellectual property for its own sake while remaining a brutal dictatorship bent on dominating the world)

The strategy of Nixon’s outreach in 1972 was to make China so rich and dependent upon trade with the world that they would modernize Chinese society and eventually treat its people better. The communists would eventually understand, thought Nixon, the actual value of capitalism and realize that protecting individual rights was the better policy when compared to concentration camps and communist purges of Chinese citizens.

Such a change, thought Nixon, would create a better and more peaceful world. We know that did not happen and the Chinese saw these trade policies as a way to undermine America and continue its goal of Chinese pre-eminence in the world.

Nixon’s mistake was his pragmatism. His desire to appease the Chinese and to assume that they could be “turned” toward capitalism through massive “bribes” and “favorable policies” meant he was willing to deal only with a short-term benefit (for him and his administration) while he ignored (or thought he could later deal with) the long-term consequences (that included the possibility that China would eventually turn the tables on us).

Do not believe that American Republicans were against this change in policy toward China. In the past, America’s anti-communists would have caused them to beware of any deal with a dictatorship like China. Certainly, many of the more vocal defenders of Taiwanese and Hong Kong capitalism looked aghast when they saw these trade policies become reality; and, indeed, many of them thought of Nixon as a traitor to capitalism. Indeed, many previously pro-capitalist politicians among the right were also pragmatists who believed that selling out America to China was not traitorous at all. Eventually, they were wrong about that too.

Now, after forty-five years of China policy, our entire society is based upon trade with China, while China has not changed its desire to overcome the U.S.A. They still have concentration camps, and they still jail and/or kill dissidents. Even worse, China has embedded itself in our universities, turned American college professors into spies and dupes, infiltrated American corporations bought American journalists who present the party line, and turn politicians into spies. Using bribery, and political scandal, they have corrupted our capitalist system and turned it into a fascist dictatorship. If only Trump had been a more eloquent thinker and speaker, he could truly have exposed this cabal that includes virtually every prominent Democrat and many prominent Republicans.

The worst aspect of American China policy is that major pragmatists (CEOs) in the corporate world want to be part of the China deals. In many cases, they preferred to close down their American factories in return for production facilities in China. In other cases, praised China policies and implied that the Chinese nation treated its people well. This was because the philosophy of pragmatism (that came out of Ivy League colleges) had been teaching CEOs to swim with the current, even if the “current” meant dealing with murderous dictatorships, racist radicals, and especially, even if it meant less popularity for these corporations in America.

Even today, many of America’s most important CEOs have no problem instituting “woke” philosophy in order to establish the surveillance state that will eventually keep Americans in line. Their tactic is to favor the progressive left as a way of continuing their drive to expand markets at the expense of political freedom. They think they can retain their near monopoly status in the USA by playing ball with the government’s desire to accommodate the Chinese state. They have no problem with the business/government alliance (fascism) as long as people do not get wise to what the left is doing on behalf of Communist China.

If we want to fight the tyranny of the Chinese communists and the threat they pose to our system of government, we must fight tyranny on principle – the principle that tyranny is force and it is evil. But, more importantly, we fight tyranny by defending and establishing a proper society based on the principles of freedom and individual rights that do not compromise with evil.

Today’s Republicans have traveled so far on the road toward liberalism that only a compromise with evil can keep them relevant. They can thank John Dewey (the pragmatist philosopher) and Richard Nixon for this current state of affairs. Despite Trump’s attitude toward China’s exploitation of America, during his Presidency, he seemed oblivious to what fighting for principles meant, and to the extent that he does not verbalize what it means to oppose China on principle, we are going to lose to China. The battle against China should be for individual rights – that are fast becoming irrelevant in America today.

We must ask the question, “What should Trump have done about the position of favoritism that past trade agreements gave to the Chinese?” The answer would have been simple. He should have negotiated fair deals with the Chinese without tariffs and he should have forced Chinese companies to compete with the world on a fair playing field. We should have been willing to cancel trade agreements that were unfavorable toward America.

This may have been difficult because the Chinese are brutal dictators who expect to win over Americans. Our inability to get fair trading terms from the Chinese would, therefore, have resulted in less trade between the two countries which would have led to new American competitors against the Chinese. This is because our country would have been able to resume manufacturing here as well as make good trade deals with other countries.

Overall, Trump’s policies were ineffective because he mimicked liberal policies and did not know he was doing it. His tariffs, in particular, did not work because his pragmatist anti-Chinese policies distorted his conservatism and gave the Chinese a reason to interfere in our elections, media and educational systems. They forced the Chinese to call in their deals with the many American politicians they had bribed over the years. Trump’s policies had the correct goal, but with incorrect means. His efforts to lower the regulatory impact of the left’s policies was effective in thwarting the negative economic impact of the Obama administration; but Trump’s policy of liberating the economy was thwarted by his very own covid policies. Eventually, he realized his goals were being destroyed by the left, especially Fauci and Birx. It was not until he was out of office that he questioned the shutdowns but by then it was too late.

To learn more about Mr. Villegas' written materials go to Robert Villegas on Amazon