Many Thanks, Comrade Trump

The story of how America spent four years punching itself in the face while China quietly took notes.

China didn’t outmaneuver the United States through some grand strategic brilliance. Beijing didn’t crack some ancient code of authoritarian efficiency.

America’s chief geopolitical rival gained a generational advantage because Washington simply walked off the field.

Between 2017 and 2021, the Trump administration actively dismantled the architecture that made American power durable, handing China opportunities so golden that even Chinese nationalists struggled to believe their luck. Some began calling Trump Chuan Jianguo, literally Trump the Nation-Builder.

The nation they meant was China.

History offers a graveyard of catastrophic autocratic thinking. Mao’s Great Leap Forward killed tens of millions through famine. The Soviet Union’s rigid five-year plans ended in economic collapse. China’s own one-child policy now leaves the country facing demographic catastrophe, with plunging birth rates that arrived too late to fix.

Autocracies lack feedback mechanisms. Leaders double down on disasters because admitting error would shatter the myth of infallibility.

Democracies possess the self-corrective advantage. Elections can change leaders. Free press can expose failures. Institutions can pump the brakes.

Theory met reality during Trump’s tenure. Reality won ugly.

Trump seemed actively hostile to the entire concept of American global leadership.

Threatened to abandon NATO. Withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership within days of taking office. Pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords. Attacked allies while praising dictators.

The TPP withdrawal alone constituted strategic malpractice. It gave China a major advantage in Asia, allowing Beijing to write the rules for trade across the region. The void accelerated the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a China-centric trade framework that will reorient East Asian economies away from the US for decades.

Consider the 2025 Munich Security Conference. A US vice president bashed European allies while China’s foreign minister laid out a vision for multilateralism and cooperation.

Make China Great Again

Beijing didn’t have to be competent.

Just had to show up while America threw tantrums.

On climate, the contrast cut deeper. After the US walked away from Paris, China reaffirmed its $3.1 billion pledge and added another billion. Beijing positioned itself as the responsible stakeholder, filling a vacuum the US created out of nationalist spite.