President Biden’s more strategic competition with China

1 June 2022

Before winning the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden wrote that the United States needs to “get tough with China”. Beijing “is playing the long game”, he argued, “by extending its global reach, promoting its own political model, and investing in the technologies of the future”. After sixteen months in office, the contours of Biden’s China policy are becoming clear. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently summarised the administration’s strategy in three words: “invest, align, compete”. Washington’s early initiatives to promote domestic renewal and allied coordination are paying dividends and, as a result, the current administration finds itself better positioned than the prior one to outcompete Beijing.

Analysts debate whether Biden is more akin to “Trump 2.0” or “Trump Lite”. Some argue that Biden resembles Trump but with “less incendiary language”. Others argue that Biden is too “soft” on China. This debate, however, sidesteps the more important question about which administration has enacted more effective policies. A review of Biden’s early actions reveals that his administration is competing more effectively with Beijing and succeeding where Trump failed. Despite their many differences, the current and former administrations have both upheld maintaining primacy as the core objective of US competition with China. The Trump administration’s Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific set out to “maintain strategic primacy in the Indo-Pacific”. The Biden administration, for its part, is seeking to build “a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favourable to the United States”.

Washington understands that it is competing with Beijing to determine not only whose economy and military are more dominant but also whose principles of governance are more worthy of global leadership.

Although so fundamental to American grand strategy, US officials rarely mention primacy as an explicit objective of strategic competition. This is partly because primacy seems unrealistic in light of the United States’ relative decline after the Cold War, as well as undesirable, considering primacy’s unintended costs like overextension and blowback. Nonetheless, successive US administrations have consistently sought to maintain military preponderance, economic competitiveness, and normative leadership, while preventing would-be rivals from dominating their spheres of influence. The Trump and Biden administrations are no exceptions. To be clear, there are major differences between the current and the former administration. Unlike Trump, Biden cares about climate change, democracy, and human rights. And even where Biden has used similar tools as Trump to compete with Beijing, the current administration has done so to better effect. Across the dimensions of economics, security, and soft power, Biden has better-connected ends with means and optimised across difficult policy tradeoffs in order to advance American primacy.

Making America competitive again

On the trade front, the Trump administration was well-known for imposing tariffs on two-thirds of US imports from China. The irony behind the trade war is that its initial goal to promote market reforms could have rendered Beijing a more formidable competitor. Nonetheless, in the years since the trade war, China doubled down on many of the least efficient aspects of its economic model. Biden’s Trade Representative (USTR) appears to accept the realities — as well as the weaknesses — of China’s economic system. USTR’s 2021 report on China’s WTO Compliance suggests that the administration does not “expect that China will willingly make fundamental changes to its state-led, nonmarket approach”. Much of Biden’s strategy, therefore, focuses on multilateral as opposed to bilateral economic policy. USTR has made efforts to ease trade frictions with allies and partners, while the Treasury led the creation of a global minimum tax regime. These two initiatives, respectively, have facilitated greater trade between friendly states and levelled the playing field for US-based firms.

In 2021, for the first time in 20 years, the US economy grew faster than China’s, driven by unprecedented fiscal support. Unlike after the global financial crisis, when China’s rebound drove the global recovery, the United States emerged from COVID-19 as the world’s primary engine of economic growth. According to the Lowy Institute, the United States’ economic, diplomatic, and military power grew by more than any country in the region last year. To be fair, Biden’s economic policy continues to suffer from a lack of support for new free trade deals, especially in Asia where the bulk of future growth is expected to originate. Asia is also a region where China is making deep economic inroads. Nonetheless, Biden's Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) could go farther to expand American influence in Asia than the prior administration’s unilateral economic policies. Although IPEF will not seek binding commitments on market access, it will seek to expand free trade by harmonising rules on trade facilitation, among other initiatives.

On technology, the Trump administration used primarily “defensive” tactics to stifle China’s technological development. Biden inherited many of Trump’s policies but has gone on the offensive by investing in American infrastructure, innovation, and human capital. The Biden administration passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, allocating over USD 500 billion to build out digital, utility, and transport infrastructure. Currently, the House and the Senate are working to pass a competitiveness bill that will allocate nearly USD 200 billion to support semiconductor fabrication, R&D and STEM education. Biden has also taken a different tack than his predecessor on immigration. The administration has encouraged global talent to contribute to America’s innovation ecosystem. Trump’s immigration policy, by contrast, precipitated a ten per cent decline in the enrolment of international students in the United States.

Finally, Biden has rallied partners to pursue coalition development. The US-EU Trade and Technology Council aims to harmonise rules on digital trade, the Quad intends to develop common standards on emerging technologies, and AUKUS plans to deploy advanced capabilities in quantum computing, artificial intelligence and other dual-use tech. These efforts have put the US in a stronger position to outcompete Beijing.

A concert of Asia

While the Trump administration deserves credit for revitalising the Quad and running with Japan’s concept of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific”, in many other domains, the former administration weakened US partnerships. Biden entered office seeking to prove that “America is back”. During its first year, the administration reaffirmed US support for NATO, upgraded the Quad to an executive-level group, inaugurated AUKUS, strengthened trilateral security cooperation with Japan and South Korea and renewed the United States’ visiting forces agreement with the Philippines. Beyond Biden’s return to multilateralism, Beijing's assertiveness has also driven US allies and partners closer together. China’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, pressure on Taiwan, sanctions on EU officials, embargoes on Australian and Lithuanian goods and strident diplomatic rhetoric has led to worsening international views of China.

There is a point, however, at which Beijing’s destabilising actions could inflict significant damage on the United States. Were a military conflict to break out, the costs of war could imperil not only China’s aspirations for global primacy but also those of the United States. In this context, the Biden administration has attempted to establish “guardrails” to prevent a mutually destructive war from breaking out. After multiple failed attempts to reactivate US-China defence hotlines, Washington made limited progress in reopening high-level security dialogues. The Biden administration’s focus on “competition without catastrophe” speaks to its long-term strategy to maintain a favourable yet sustainable mode of competition with Beijing.

Principled realism

The Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy declared that “principled realism” should guide US policy. In operationalising the strategy, however, Trump was anything but principled. The former President was well-known for coddling dictators and eroding democratic norms. According to his former National Security Advisor, Trump once suggested that “Xi should go ahead with building the camps [in Xinjiang]”. For Biden, the rule of law, democracy, and human rights are fundamental principles of US foreign and domestic policy. His administration has tried to revitalise liberal institutions at home by funding anti-extremism initiatives and urging the passage of a voting rights bill. Internationally, the United States rejoined the UN Human Rights Council, convened a Democracy Summit, and committed an additional USD 400 million to democracy promotion. Noticeably absent from the Summit were some of America’s longstanding allies like Saudi Arabia and Thailand who might otherwise bolster American power. Washington understands that it is competing with Beijing to determine not only whose economy and military are more dominant but also whose principles of governance are more worthy of global leadership.

After sixteen months in office, the Biden administration has put the United States in a stronger and more principled position to advance American primacy. Efforts to revitalise the American economy, generate technological innovation, strengthen alliances, and support democratic norms have bolstered the United States’ power and prestige. As the United States approaches the midterms in November, the opposition party will likely go to great lengths to cast Biden as “weak” on China. Considering Trump’s failures and Biden’s early successes, however, it is clear that the current administration is competing more effectively with China than the prior administration.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Nathaniel Sher is a research analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He completed Master's degrees from Tsinghua University and the University of Chicago. His work has been published in Foreign Policy, The Wire China, and Responsible Statecraft. Image credit: Wikimedia.