James Crabtree
With only a few weeks left in office, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration recently launched new export bans designed to hit China’s semiconductor industry. In return, Beijing announced restrictions on critical mineral exports to the United States. These latest measures fit a pattern under the Biden administration of using narrowly targeted measures to contain China’s growing technological prowess. As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office in January, however, U.S. restrictions on China are likely to become far more dramatic.
The Biden administration’s approach to selectively cut economic ties to China masks a division within the West that Trump’s election victory will surely deepen. Over recent years, Washington’s closest geopolitical partners were able to labor under a happy delusion regarding their relations with China. Full economic and technological decoupling between China and the West was deemed impossible and even undesirable. Much of the policy focus was on reducing specific, narrow risks of dependency on and coercion by Beijing. To signal consensus and paper over their differences over the extent of separation, Western diplomats, including those in the United States, duly began talking about de-risking rather than decoupling.
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