For the past five years, a central tenet of United States foreign policy has been the protection of American jobs against the trade and economic practices of China, whose economy remains rapidly growing since Xi’s incorporation of international economic initiatives, cross-strait trade, and the loosening of economic restrictions. China has emerged in recent decades as a competitor to the United States’ economic soft power worldwide and a threat to its historical hegemony. This turn of events was born out of, and continues to propagate, an antagonistic relationship that is only further intensified by the U.S.’s longstanding problem with systemic racism, culminating in an unfortunate increase in hate crimes and racism against Asian people in America. The present conflict may be international in nature, but it has serious domestic consequences: some that the US electorate is more willing to recognize than others.

Trade wars are not a novel concept in American politics and often exist as a background or even the spark to more aggressive conflict. The primary motivation, however, often comes out of a desire to protect a nation’s economic standing from foreign influence and secure the domestic economy through American manufacturing. This trade war between the U.S. and China comes at the heels of multiple decades of investment in foreign labor by American companies – often to take advantage of looser regulations and cheaper, exploitable labor – particularly in China and Taiwan. The government’s inaction to regulate this previously has led to grim consequences, and the withdrawal of big business from the American labor market puts American workers at risk of losing their jobs, predominantly blue-collar workers. These are not particularly novel struggles, but more often than not, they have resulted in prejudice against foreign labor, both abroad and in the U.S. American xenophobia dating back to the Industrial Revolution was rooted in competition for jobs, especially due to the willingness of large employers to pay foreign or migrant workers less, fueling animosity from rural Americans. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act – which established an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese migrant laborers – is a perfect representation of these attitudes, validating an ethnic-based animosity that still has effects today. 

These wounds in American political culture have not healed; they allowed Donald Trump to run a successful presidential campaign on nationalist rhetoric and protectionist policy, pulling  American anti-foreign sentiment intensely into the forefront of American political culture. Trump’s populist rhetoric stoked the fervor of disaffected voters whose primary political interest lies in job insecurity, providing a direction for this anger and creating a space for American antagonist attitudes against China to grow. The concern of job loss overseas was not the worst crime of American politics: that lies with the response to COVID-19 under Trump’s presidency. The pandemic was undeniably a milestone event in recent history, and Trump’s failure to properly address the pandemic was among the largest contributions to his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020. What was worse than his political non-response was his public blame for the outbreak of COVID-19 on China and its government: his inflammatory use of the term “ChineseVirus” on March 16, 2020, directly correlated with a rise in anti-Asian sentiment.  Anti-Asian hate crimes rose by 339 percent through 2021, and AAPI students suffer more from in-class bullying than any other ethnicity. This sentiment persisted, even after he lost the November 2020 election. Stoking an environment of hate with inflammatory language is a well-used tactic of demagogues, scoundrels, and tyrants. It destroyed the safety of Asian Americans at home, and it contributed to the destruction of diplomatic relations with China. 

Although the executive branch of the United States has been rid of Trump for over two years, relations with China have barely improved. Trade is the best metric of these relations, yet the Biden administration has refused to withdraw these blatantly harmful and antagonistic policies. Biden has maintained a billion dollars worth of tariffs on Chinese imports initially implemented by Trump. These policies have blatantly failed to strongarm China into obeying American interests and do more to hurt both Americans and Chinese citizens. China’s retaliatory tariffs have equally hurt American consumers and businesses to no benefit of themselves either. It’s quite simply a bitter conflict between two superpowers, undeniably initiated by the United States. It comes at a deep, bitter cost. Stereotyping and xenophobia have many roots in the United States, and we need to take legitimate measures to curb the spread of this animosity. The first step, and the most obvious one: acknowledge the trade war as the failure that it is, work to recuperate the harm it has caused, and end it.

More From Our Writers