The current US president, Joe Biden, has spent his first term talking about the need to use American democracy as a counterweight to autocracy in China, among other countries. Biden called out Chinese President Xi Jinping by name in his State of the Union address earlier this year as he slammed autocracies.
“Name me a world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping. Name me one!” Biden said, ad-libbing in the House chamber in his February address.
How about the former US president, Donald Trump, who is desperately trying to become a world leader once again?
Trump has spoken with clear envy for Xi’s iron-handed ability to extend his presidency for the foreseeable future.
“He’s now president for life,” Trump said during a speech to donors at Mar-a-Lago back in 2018. “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
For all the difference in their rhetoric, however, it’s striking that there is a throughline between Trump’s and Biden’s China policy. Trump amped up US support for Taiwan, which Biden has continued. Trump engineered tariffs on Chinese imports that complicated the US relationship with China. Biden has notably left them in place.
A new fentanyl deal
The Biden administration is on the cusp of a new deal in which China would agree to crack down on the export of ingredients used to make fentanyl, known as precursors, which find their way from China to Mexico and ultimately devastate US communities.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because the Trump administration also reached a deal with China to schedule fentanyl and its derivatives as a controlled substance. That earlier deal, agreed to over a steak dinner shared by Trump and Xi in Buenos Aires, according to CNN’s report at the time, didn’t stop the flow of fentanyl into the US.
Seeking competition, not conflict
Biden is set to meet with Xi Wednesday outside San Francisco on the sidelines of a larger meeting of Asia-Pacific nations, and the main goal of the four-hour meeting, according to the US president, is to get the two countries “back on a normal course” and “being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another if there’s a crisis, being able to make sure that our militaries still have contact with one another.”
That’s a particularly important goal at a time when two wars – the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the Israel-Hamas war – make the post-World War II international order feel flimsy. A key reason Biden has cited for supporting Ukraine against Russia is to deter countries outside Europe, who are watching.