China hawks grow queasy over Trump's push for deals with Beijing

President Donald Trump rewrote Washington’s rules for dealing with China in his first presidency, embracing confrontation, launching a trade war and upending decades of policy. In his second term, China hawks in Washington fear that Trump is going soft.

As Trump pursues a trade pact with the U.S.’s biggest economic and strategic rival, advocates of a tougher China policy fear they’re being sidelined inside the administration as the tech industry’s influence grows — alongside the president’s appetite for what he’s called “a big deal.”

That concern has grown more urgent as Trump looks toward a meeting with President Xi Jinping that’s expected in the coming weeks. In the leadup, China has made a series of demands that would upend decades of U.S. policy, including looser curbs on investment in exchange for more inflows, and eroding U.S. support for Taiwan.

Further fanning their fears, Trump has already shown he’s willing to overrule the hawks’ concerns, including with a deal to ensure the survival of video-sharing app TikTok and plans to let Nvidia Corp. sell some of its AI chips to China.

He’s purged the National Security Council of many advisers who advocated a tougher line toward China and diminished the role of the council to a point where security and tech experts worry that no one is left to push back against those who seek closer business ties with Beijing.

“Beijing is in a sweet spot right now,” said Matt Pottinger, who led the NSC’s work on China as deputy national security advisor in Trump’s first term. “The White House seems unaware that its TikTok policy and its weakening restrictions on chip exports are massive, unilateral concessions to the Chinese Communist Party.”

In some ways, Trump’s stance shouldn’t be a surprise given his professed willingness to cut deals with international actors otherwise shunned, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. But the stakes are far higher with China given how entwined the U.S. and Chinese economies are, as well as China’s ability to challenge the U.S. on artificial intelligence, chips and cybertechnology.

Trump has invoked national security to impose tariffs on a range of imports, including aluminum, steel and kitchen cabinets. But during his first term he also had a track record of rejecting efforts to block sales to China and lambasted aides for what he called the “fake term of national security.”

The tension broke into the open last week after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang lashed out at China hard-liners in a podcast interview. An increasingly influential informal adviser to Trump on tech and China policy, he said the hawks wear a “badge of shame” and are unpatriotic. Huang’s defenders later argued he was taken out of context.

That prompted a response from avowed hawks like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who called for Huang’s arrest for being “an agent of influence of the Chinese Communist Party.” Joe Lonsdale, a Trump-supporting tech investor, posted that he was a proud China hawk and that “the CCP is an evil, murderous authoritarian regime.”

Huang and David Sacks, the tech investor and podcaster who serves as Trump’s AI and crypto czar, argue the hawks have it wrong. They say it’s in America’s interest to get Beijing hooked on U.S. technology to keep Chinese companies from amassing the critical mass and market share they could use to overwhelm American companies in other markets.

“This narrative that seeks to pit China hawks against business people in the administration is based on a false dichotomy,” Sacks said in an interview. “We all agree that we have to win the AI race against China. The question is over tactics. We believe the way to win is by supporting American innovation, infrastructure, energy and exports.”

In August, Trump reversed U.S. restrictions on sales of some AI chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in exchange for the government’s getting a 15% cut. But Nvidia and AMD are still barred from selling other AI chips into China. It’s unclear how many restrictions on exports of advanced technology will be eased as Washington and Beijing continue their negotiations.

White House officials insist that Trump remains tough on China and point to the steep tariffs he’s imposed on Chinese goods this year. They say Trump can balance both commercial interests and national security priorities — just as he can have both a tough China policy and a good relationship with Xi.

“As the president has said, he has a good relationship with President Xi, which he leans on to achieve better outcomes for Americans, such as a deal that saves TikTok for millions of American people and businesses without compromising our national security,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in an email.

In September, the White House pulled, without explanation, the nomination of Landon Heid to be an assistant secretary in charge of Commerce’s Bureau of International Security, which manages export controls. Heid served as a U.S. diplomat in Beijing and until February was a tech policy expert on the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on China, which has taken a hard line on the threat posed by China.

In confirmation testimony in April, Heid warned that China’s pursuit of emerging technologies represents a “profound threat to U.S. economic and national security.”

One person familiar with the situation said Heid was seen internally as being too hawkish and emblematic of an emerging divide between the White House and the House committee, which has built a reputation for hard-line policy on China.

White House officials insist the withdrawal of Heid, who’s returned to the NSC, had nothing to do with his policy stance. Heid didn’t respond to a request for comment.

While prominent China skeptics like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance remain in the administration, most have gone quiet on China policy, choosing to fight other battles.

To some longtime China skeptics in Washington the conversation feels like a rewind to the time before Trump’s first term gave birth to a bipartisan consensus on the need to counter China forcefully.

“They’re basically the same people who ran China policy before Trump changed the tone of China policy in 2015,” Derek Scissors, a self-proclaimed China hawk at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said of the business interests who appear to be increasingly driving policy.

“And there’s an irony there, obviously, which is that Trump changed the tone of the conversation on China and you see these people are now changing it back while he’s president.”

Some hawks think they may win the fight in the end. Michael Sobolik, a China hawk at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, said there remains a lingering, potent suspicion toward Beijing and business interests lobbying on China policy.

“It’s appealing to believe that we can maximize profits and have zero security trade-offs,” Sobolik said. “Usually the Chinese Communist Party has a way of exposing the fallacy in the middle of that argument.”

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(With assistance from Bill Allison, Michael Shepard, Ian King and Joe Deaux.)