Joe Biden Aims to Erase Donald Trump’s Policies in Combating China

The Biden administration has already taken steps to undo former President Trump’s policies in countering China, a Republican Study Committee report reveals.

Instead of displaying “American leadership through a strategy based on peace through strength, the Biden team so far has exhibited a pattern of weakness, and a return to Obama’s failed approach of engaging rather than holding China accountable for it’s bad behavior,” the report states.

Outlined in the report are ways in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks a continuation of an Obama-style “vision of accommodation and cooperation, rather than containment and confrontation, with the CCP.”

The following are eight key actions from the report that demonstrate Biden’s approach:

1. January 21, 2021: Biden issued an executive order to suspend Trump’s E.O. 13920, which protected the U.S. against China from accessing or owning parts of the U.S. power grid.
2. January 21, 2021: Biden rejoined the World Health Organization without concern for “China’s covering up the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
3. January 22, 2021: The State Department “was undertaking a review of former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s historic determination that China was committing genocide against the Uyghurs.”
4. January 26, 2021: Biden’s secretary of commerce nominee, Gina Raimondo, “refused to commit to keeping Huawei on the Department of Commerce’s Entities List.”
5. January 27, 2021: The Treasury Department “delayed until late May the implementation of President Trump’s EO 12959 putting sanctions on Chinese military companies operating in the United States.”
6. February 8, 2021: The State Department announced “the U.S. was rejoining the U.N. Human Rights Council. Despite the name, the so-called ‘human rights’ council includes Communist countries such as China and Cuba.”
7. February 8, 2021: Biden withdrew the requirement for “American colleges and universities to disclose their partnerships with Confucius Institutes.”
8. February 10, 2021: The Justice Department “announced in a court filing that the Department of Commerce is ‘reviewing’ whether or not TikTok was a national security threat.”

These actions are consistent with “a number of individuals who either have had links to the CCP, or have a record of weak statements and actions on confronting [China].” These individuals include high-ranking members of the Biden administration. See below:

• National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan
• U.S. ambassador to the United Nations nominee Linda Thomas Greenfield
• Under secretary of defense for policy nominee Colin Kahl
• White House National Security Council Director for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell
• Secretary of State Tony Blinken
• CIA Director William Burns
• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
• Commerce secretary nominee Gina Raimondo
• Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
• Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin
• Climate czar John Kerry
• Head of the Domestic Policy Council Susan Rice
• Special assistant to the president for presidential personnel Thomas Zimmerman
• White House National Security Council Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk

The report concludes that the Biden administration’s “approach to China reflects much of the failed policies, and failed team, of the Obama administration, which saw China not as a competitor, but a nation that could be engaged on a whole host of issues from climate change to global development.”