Is Trump a new cold warrior?

Does the Trump White House think it’s waging a tactical trade war or a strategic cold war? The former would have the potential of being concluded with a trade deal in the president’s first term. The latter would be a lengthy, all-government, geopolitical struggle likely to encompass a second Trump term and future administrations.

Moreover, when we’re discussing the Trump White House, Trump and the White House may see things differently. As Axios reports, “Based on numerous conversations with Trump administration officials over the last few weeks, it is clear that many of the president’s top advisers view China first and foremost as a national security threat rather than as an economic partner. … Trump himself still views China primarily through an economic prism.” Even with inside info, this appraisal of Trump would be obvious to anyone watching him speak extemporaneously with reporters or speaking to supporters at big rallies.

If Trump were a believer in the Long Twilight Struggle 2.0 — sub out Moscow for Beijing — the president might be tougher on key Chinese tech companies such as Huawei and ZTE. He might be assembling a coalition of liberal democracies to confront China, instead of threatening them with tariffs, too. (Note the Reagan administration’s famous 1982 national security strategy memo that stressed the value in “strengthening existing alliances” and promoting “a well-functioning international economic system with minimal distortions to trade and investment and broadly agreed and respected rules.”) And he might be speaking about China in something other than almost purely economic terms. Here is the president at Cincinnati, Ohio rally last month:

Before I took office, foreign countries ripped us off, robbed us blind, and pushed us around, but America is not being pushed around anymore. Do you realize that? I think I got that from working in Ohio for two summers, right? We’ve taken the toughest ever action to stand up to Chinese trade abuse, and I just announced another 10 percent tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese products that come into our country, and that’s on top of the 25 percent that we take of $250 billion coming in from China.

And don’t let them tell you, the fact is, China devalues their currency, they pour money into their system, they pour it in, and because they do that, you’re not paying for those tariffs, China’s paying for those tariffs. For the last 20 years, China’s taken hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars out of our country, and now we’re stopping the theft of American jobs, we’re stopping the theft of so many other things happening, including intellectual property. They steal our intellectual property. And you know, I think they want to try and make a deal with us, but I’m not sure, because the word is, I feel, they want to wait till they get, oh they’re praying, they’re praying. They would like to see a new President in a year and a half, so they could continue to rip off the United States like they’ve been doing for the last 25 years.

They would love to see a guy like sleepy Joe Biden, who has no clue what the hell he’s doing. They’d say to sleepy Joe, “Sir, just sign right there.” “Oh, OK, I’ll sign.” We’ve been losing hundreds of billions of dollars a year to China, and it has to stop. They understand that. President Xi is a good man, he’s a friend of mine.

He understands it, and until such time as there is a deal, we will be taxing the hell out of China. That’s all there is, OK? If foreign countries don’t want to pay a tariff, I have a simple solution, make your product in America, come on back to the United States, come on back to Ohio, there’s no tariff, there’s no tariff.

Now compare that to this statement of principles from the Committee on the Present Danger: China, an anti-China, New Cold War group whose founders include former Trump adviser Steve Bannon:

Global hegemony has been the long-standing goal of the Chinese Communist Party the pursuit of which has become, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, increasingly brazen, blatant, and aggressive. For decades, the PRC has used an array of asymmetric financial, economic, cyber, information, influence, espionage, political warfare and other techniques (including unconventional ones) to weaken and ultimately defeat America. … In the face of such threats, America must mobilize all instruments of national power to protect its people, territory, human freedom, vital interests and allies from the Chinese Communist Party. … Prevailing against this dangerous adversary will require an understanding of the threat posed by its totalitarian system; a determination to reverse decades of American miscalculation, inaction and appeasement; and concerted, sustained effort on the part of the U.S. government, civil society, private sector business entities and the public at large to implement needed corrective actions. … There is no hope of coexistence with China as long as the Communist Party governs the country. We seek China’s peaceful evolution into a nation that respects the rule of law and individual human rights, instead of threatening its own people, as well as others.

Notice no talk of sorghum or soybeans or trade deficits. It also hard to read that statement and not think that will be some cost to this conflict. No hand-wavey “Trade wars are good and easy to win” rhetoric. Nothing about a New Cold War sounds easy at all. Of course, just because the president isn’t a new cold warrior — though the Axios piece speculates he could move in that direction — doesn’t mean the current conflict can’t escalate and worsen. In a new Peterson Institute trade analysis, “US-China Trade War: The Guns of August,” Chad Bown writes, “It is worth recalling the historian Barbara Tuchman’s ‘The Guns of August,’ which provides a step-by-step telling of how leaders stumbled into the disaster of World War I: ‘War is the unfolding of miscalculations,’ she wrote.”