Trump is China’s Favorite ‘Useful Idiot’

On every front, Trump is helping China

Who lost China? That was the question right-wingers asked after Chinese communists secured power in 1949. Fast forward to 2025, when our question should be: who lost American dominance to China? The answer, of course, is Donald Trump.

China is now in the cat-bird’s seat, the beneficiary of Trump’s cloddish foreign policy. Trump’s delusional vision of a Russia-U.S. partnership and his zig-zagging tariff war with China (with intermittent attempts at ingratiation) have pushed these two powers together. Worse, seeing Trump as weak, gullible, and unsophisticated, the two powers have found a new member of the alliance of autocrats.

The sight of Wednesday’s elaborate, humongous Chinese military parade (putting Trump’s pathetic, disorganized birthday parade to shame) sent an unmistakable signal to the ever more enfeebled president. The summit that preceded it was an even bigger rebuke to the United States. The New York Times reports:

It was a scene in eastern China almost certainly intended for an audience on the other side of the world: The leaders of China, Russia and India, the three largest powers not aligned with the West, smiling and laughing like good friends as they greeted each other at a summit on Monday.

It starts with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia holding hands and walking into a meeting hall filled with other world leaders. They head straight for President Xi Jinping of China, shake hands and form a close circle. A few words are exchanged before translators join the huddle. Mr. Putin cracks a broad smile, and Mr. Modi lets out a big laugh. At one point, Mr. Modi joins hands with the two leaders.

Between imposing secondary sanctions on India and trying to take credit for the India-Pakistan ceasefire, Trump wound up alienating Modi—and giving China a new ally. As Paul Krugman observes: “America has spent decades trying to cultivate good relations with India, which could be a useful counterweight to China. Now we have a nearly complete rupture, with India actually cozying up to China.”

Not so long ago, India was pursuing the so-called China Plus One, a strategy to make India an alternative to China. Trump has made hash of that, to the delight of Beijing. “Mr. Trump’s tariffs are already causing dislocation in supply chains. India has been rendered far less enticing to American importers,” the New York Times reports. “[India’s economy] is currently fifth and on pace to overtake Japan soon. If the United States won’t help or, worse, gets in its way, India has no choice but to get closer to Beijing, even as it holds to its goal of becoming a stronger manufacturing rival to its giant neighbor.”

Incredibly, China has been the biggest beneficiary of an assortment of Trump’s domestic and foreign moves. When he blew up USAID; China was happy to step in to influence peddle in developing countries. Business Insider reported earlier this year:

China has its own capacity-building programs, such as the training of political elites, government officials, and subject-matter experts from Africa and Southeast Asia. Those programs have a strong component of promoting China’s governance model and exporting China’s political ideology. …. [L]eft uncontested after the withdrawal of USAID programming, the influence of Chinese political capacity-building projects could grow in recipient countries in the long run.

At a moment when China is striving to expand its influence in Africa, a demonstration of U.S. fecklessness and indifference will only accelerate that process. (Even aside from China, Trump has immeasurably harmed U.S. interests in short-circuiting infectious diseases, gaining access to precious minerals, and stemming outflow of migrants that can destabilize neighbors. Our self-sabotage undermines all that.)

While Trump bizarrely has tried to stymie green energy development; China accordingly has raced ahead to extend its lead in electric car manufacturing and exports. “The speed and scale of China’s electric vehicle revolution has caught the world by surprise, and analysts say this trend shows no sign of slowing down,” CNBC reports. China is projected to “manufacture 36 million vehicles per year, or four out of every 10 cars built globally” by 2030.

Trump has engaged in a senseless trade war with our closest trading partners; China now has an opening to pick up new markets. In particular, democratic allies in Asia increasingly will find no place to turn but China, as crippling sanctions close off the U.S. market.

“Trump is showing that he is willing to violate long-standing norms and strike at the core of other countries’ prosperity—and that nothing in the American system will stop a president hell-bent on punishing his own country’s allies for the sake of domestic politics,” Atlantic magazine’s Phillips Payson O’Brien wrote in April.

This won’t just drive traditional allies away from the U.S.; it will also likely push them toward closer economic relations with the world’s other superpower. China offers access to rare-earth minerals and deep, well-functioning supply chains. Chinese leaders can present themselves, unlike their mercurial American counterparts, as reliable and steady economic partners.

Finally, Trump has shattered the crown jewels of America’s economy—its universities, medical research institutions, and ability to attract the best and the brightest from overseas. When our universities lose hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and U.S. students and scientists decide to head overseas, the U.S. loses its long-established, most valuable advantage over China. In response, China is building mega-universities trying to keep its talent at home and lure foreign students turned away from the U.S. (Meanwhile, TACO Trump’s reversal on his harsh crackdown on admitting Chinese students and issuing 600,000 visas has drawn the ire of his MAGA base, leaving their stance uncertain.)

Trump critics have noted that if the Kremlin had a paid agent in the Oval Office, he or she couldn’t do as much damage to America as Donald Trump has done in 8 months. The same can be said of China.

Trump’s incompetence has helped forge a strong India-Russia-China alliance, given China a leg up in Africa and other parts of the developing world, boosted China in the race to dominate the clean energy sector, sent trading partners fleeing into China’s open arms, and frittered away our intellectual capital. Beijing could never have dreamed that such a “useful idiot” would occupy the presidency.