MORNING GLORY: Trump's key signals amidst the noise

Fox News

13-03-2025

President Trump's most important moves among the many important moves that he has made in his first two months in office are those that restored the hard line he had taken towards China in his first term, a very firm line that has quickly been put back in its place of defining priority for our foreign policy and national security. Trump began with his support at the Pentagon and in Congress for defense spending re-focused for the Indo-Pacific region and with tariffs on imports from the People's Republic of China.The tariff arguments with Mexico, Canada and the European Union can be resolved over the negotiating table. But not so the competition between the superpowers. That competition will hopefully never become an armed conflict, but it would almost certainly have become one if American indifference to the ambitions of the PRC continued.The United States finally began to develop a strategy for containing China's global ambitions in the first Trump term. All of that effort was wasted by a disastrous four years of a leaderless country during the regency years of Joe Biden's infirmity.
CHINA, REACTING TO TRUMP TARIFFS, PROMISES TO 'FIGHT TILL THE END' IN TRADE WAR 'OR ANY OTHER TYPE OF WAR'Now the second part of the first American counter-China strategy is rolling out and it begins with our massive investment in our sea services and our on-shoring of the critical production lines abandoned to our adversary over four decades. President Trump speaks very softly and respectfully about General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping. That is the correct tone for superpower diplomacy. But Trump's respect for the Chinese dictator's power is as certain as is his resolve to counter it.
We all fell for the open secret that Deng Xiaoping proclaimed as China's key principle during his long run as the PRC's leader: "Hide your strength, bide your time." Quietly, consistently, China built its economic strength and then its military strength. America's China lobby helped the process of China's astonishing growth until Trump arrived on the scene.No documentary source has ever been found for the saying, often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, that "the Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them," but it served nicely as an explanation for the early decades of the Soviet Union's growth and it most certainly applies to America's China policy after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Not now. Never again for the foreseeable future in all likelihood. In early February Trump put a 10% tariff in place against goods from China and China quickly issued retaliatory tariffs. In early March, Trump upped the U.S.'s tariff on China by 25%. More retaliation from China followed.Don't expect this confrontation to be toned down or delayed. America has one peer competitor on the world stage across all domains and it is China, and China's hostility to us and our allies is open and ongoing. The espionage effort against us is vast and has gone mostly unchecked during the Biden years of fog and mumbling. The FBI under Trump raided and shut down the PRC's Houston consulate. The FBI under Biden raided Mar-a-Lago. Trump is back and new FBI Director Kash Patel will hopefully not disappoint when it comes to CCP espionage.There is talk of summits between Trump and Xi. Fine. Richard Nixon met with both Leonid Brezhnev and Mao. Summits can keep the crises away, conflict below the kinetic level. Both China and Russia have vast nuclear arsenals and emerging new technologies, though not as large or as lethal as ours. It's good to keep everyone focused on that basic fact set and to not lose sight of our need to keep our guard up there.
And Trump is not a chump of course. He'd rather the competition with China be contained and controlled but he won't be rolled and he won't be sold word salad at a summit or three. Trump leaves the table when there is no deal to be had and there is no significant deal to be had with the Chinese Communist Party, which has gone hard-line for the dozen years of Xi's increasingly iron-fisted rule. Trump has never not seen Xi clearly for who he is or how tough an adversary he has become.Admiral Mark Montgomery (USN, Ret.) talked at some length with me this week about the outline of the long-term strategy for dealing with China. Watch that discussion here.
What the admiral pointed out to me is that I had seen, but not understood the significance of the visit of the president of Taiwan Semiconductor to the White House. When President Trump shook hands with C.C. Wei, chairman and CEO of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on March 3, that was the signal through all the noise. Along with the China tariffs, along with Trump's emphasis on the Navy, Marine Corps and shipbuilding, here was a deft delivery of some diplomacy.
The number one bestseller on the New York Times non-fiction list a week back was Senator Tom Cotton's new "Seven Things You Can't Say About China." The senator from Arkansas is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the third ranking member of the GOP conference. He doesn't speak for the president, of course, but Cotton does speak with Trump. They get along. That's a very good thing, for if even half of Trump's and Cotton's shared, clear-eyed understanding of China spreads throughout Team Trump, the country will be prepared for Trump's most important fight among many important fights, one that will have to be carried consistently forward for decades.
Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel's news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University's Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.