Trump escalates tensions and trade barriers with China

Former President Trump and his top foreign policy advisers are putting Chinese President Xi Jinping on notice, threatening to enact a more aggressive U.S. policy toward China as Trump looks increasingly likely to return to the White House.

There’s bipartisan support in Washington for a tough U.S. approach to China, but Trump’s former top officials, who are likely to serve in a second administration, are advocating for a larger U.S. military buildup in Asia and punishing tariffs on Chinese imports.

“There is no such thing as an accidental war,” Matt Pottinger, Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, said in a foreign policy speech Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation.

“Washington’s fixation on unintentional conflict and hotlines may have emboldened Beijing to undertake more aggressive behavior.”

And Pottinger called for increasing America’s $800 billion defense budget — arguing it is a necessity for the U.S. to both assist Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia and deter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

“It’s gonna be a lot cheaper for us to deter in multiple theaters simultaneously, than to deter really well in one theater, but accept major military defeats in other areas, because it’s the same enemy,” he said

Trump’s last national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, has called for “deploying the entire Marine Corps to the Pacific,” scaling up missile defenses and fighter jet fleets, and transferring a Naval aircraft carrier from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Former top administration officials are also advocating a Trump 2.0 economic policy toward China to include 60 percent tariffs on all Chinese goods entering the U.S. and increasing restrictions on technology exports to China.