Agreement by agreement, President Trump is resetting the terms of international trade.
Unsurprisingly, the hardest negotiation has been with China.
For a quarter century, it got everything it wanted. China disrupted sector after sector by giving its companies vast government subsidies, few labor standards, and the fruits of forced technology transfers. Its exporters could then sell their products freely across the world.
With the state backstopping losses in exchange for market share acquisition, Chinese companies could offer unbelievably low prices. This would destroy large parts of the U.S. industrial base, as manufacturers were put out of business or were forced to migrate to Asia.
Then came Donald Trump.
Ending China’s predatory trade practices has been an animating force of his political life. As a skilled negotiator, President Trump understands the importance of leverage. In his view, America, as the world’s largest consumer market, has no greater source of leverage over China than conditioning the entry of its products into the U.S. economy.
Following the negotiations this spring, Chinese exporters will now face an average tariff of 55% on U.S. bound goods.
President Trump sees tariffs as essential to establishing the conditions for rebuilding the U.S. industrial base, which, in turn, is integrally connected to broad prosperity and the maintenance of U.S. economic and military power.
While reindustrialization is important, wealth and power in the 21st century will be substantially built on technological leadership.
Over the last 15 years, China has also become a technology powerhouse. It built its advantages using much the same playbook, including stolen intellectual property, forced technology transfers, and exploitation of open-source platforms. China Inc. then builds on these “advantages.”
Today, China is grappling for advantage in an array of critical fields such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and 5G. These technologies will not only shape economies but also military capabilities and political influence in the decades ahead.
Across the political spectrum, it is almost universally understood that U.S. primacy rests on continued U.S. technological leadership. That is why for more than a decade America has taken pains to try to restrict Chinese access to key technologies.
The Biden Administration applied strict export controls to a small handful of technologies – an approach they dubbed “small yard, high fence.”
Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s current Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is looking for a more holistic strategy. He recently stated, “it is not enough to seek to protect our technological lead. We also have a duty to promote American technological leadership.”
The first step in any competition is to avoid giving away easy points to the other team. While export controls have guarded America’s back door, powerful technologies sit on its front lawn with a sign reading: “please take.”
One glaring example is semiconductors. Semiconductors are the “brains” of modern devices, from smartphones to missile systems. Despite efforts by both the Trump and Biden administrations to curtail Chinese access to advanced chip-making equipment, Beijing has found a workaround: open-source chip design architectures like RISC-V.
Unlike proprietary architectures controlled by American firms, RISC-V is governed by an international foundation that conveniently relocated outside the United States in 2020 due to “concerns of political disruption.” This has allowed Chinese firms and state-backed entities to embrace RISC-V as a cornerstone of their semiconductor strategy—embedding it into both commercial and military applications.
This is not a hypothetical threat. China’s government has launched a “rapid, focused, and coordinated investment” campaign to develop RISC-V-based chips, bypassing Western restrictions. Alarmingly, many U.S. companies are still contributing to RISC-V’s development, inadvertently strengthening China’s hand.
Experts have been sounding the alarm for years. Rick Switzer, a respected national security advisor poised for a senior role in the Trump administration, has long warned of the risks of allowing Beijing to co-opt open-source hardware. His concerns gained even more urgency after China admitted this past spring to hacking into U.S. critical infrastructure.
The Trump administration has an opportunity—indeed, a responsibility—to close these loopholes and build a more robust technology policy.
This requires a two-pronged approach. First, Washington must impose restrictions on American companies and individuals contributing to RISC-V advancements, ensuring that U.S. expertise is not subsidizing China's technological rise.
Second, the federal government should ban the use of RISC-V-based chips in critical infrastructure, as well as in all government and military applications.
These measures will be politically contentious and technically challenging but can be very effective.
Trade wars may grab headlines, but the quiet battles over standards, architectures, and codebases will define the true balance of power in the 21st century.
If the United States is serious about winning the technology competition, it must pivot from reactive trade skirmishes to a proactive technology strategy that addresses the full spectrum of Chinese ambitions.
