FiveThirtyEight points out President Biden’s China policy seems like a holdover for Trump’s after Trump could’t get any deals there………
President Biden hasn’t been shy about undoing the legacy of his immediate predecessor. It was a rallying cry of his presidential campaign, and as such it has defined his first eight months in office. On Biden’s first day in the White House, he signaled climate change would once again be a top issue by bringing the United States back into the 2015 Paris Agreement, which Donald Trump had withdrawn from when he was president. Biden also reversed Trump’s ban on transgender Americans serving in the military and has taken a number of steps to repudiate a president who made white identity politics and racial resentment central to his message.
One notable exception is how Biden has handled America’s relationship with China. On this issue, Biden has hardly distanced himself from Trump: In fact, Biden’s tough-on-China approach has arguably been even tougher. Biden has kept in place many of the much-maligned Trump tariffs. He’s also harshly criticized China for its role in handling the coronavirus outbreak. And he’s taken to task its human rights track record and expressed support for an independent Taiwan, two things the Trump administration also did, albeit at the last minute….
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To understand why Biden’s approach to China is often considered “Trump 2.0,” it’s important to first establish Americans’ attitudes toward China. Broadly speaking, Americans of all political stripes don’t view the country favorably. Though Democrats and Republicans disagree as to whether the Chinese government should be held responsible for the role it played in the coronavirus outbreak, Americans’ feelings toward the country have gotten worse since the start of the coronavirus pandemic….