Whether President Trump is reelected or defeated in November, the Republican Party will have a presidential primary on its hands come 2024. We don’t yet know if the party will be looking to turn the page from the Trump era or if candidates will be competing over who will most faithfully carry on the Trump legacy. But in a very real sense, the 2024 primary is already underway, and its central issue is already clear: Who has the best plan for dealing with China?
Foreign policy questions often ebb and flow in their importance to the electorate. While healthcare or the economy can remain top of the list for years and years, Iran or Russia or North Korea tend to pop up in headlines without popping to the top of voter priority lists. But China is hardly just a foreign policy issue and is deeply interwoven into all of those issues voters put atop their lists.
Healthcare? The pandemic that is upending our healthcare system originated in China. Economy and jobs? Chinese economic competition has shaped much of our economic landscape for decades. While crises happening elsewhere in the world thankfully do not always have an impact on the day-to-day lives of Americans, China’s actions create significant ripple effects that voters can feel.
There are two key reasons I believe China will remain the dominant issue in the Republican Party for years to come.
First, rising apprehension about China predates both the spread of COVID-19 and the Trump era and is, therefore, less dependent on how either of those questions is resolved.
Despite holding slightly more favorable views toward China during the 2000s, the public shifted to a more unfavorable posture during the 2010s. In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, two-thirds of Americans said they viewed China unfavorably, and this was not an issue that had yet been touched by partisanship, with 62% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans, respectively, holding this view.
Of course, in the wake of COVID-19, Republicans are now even more focused on being tough on China. Appearing on Fox Business last week to discuss legislation that would strip many Chinese companies of their ability to be listed on American stock exchanges, Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida said, “I eventually would like to see people walk into a Walmart … seeing made in China and putting the product down.” Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy recently announced a China task force comprised of a mix of committee leaders and rising stars such as Reps. Elise Stefanik, Adam Kinzinger, and Mike Gallagher.
Whether we have recovered fully as a nation or are still dealing with the aftermath of this crisis three or four years from now, the COVID-19 crisis did not create Republican frustration with China, and this focus will not go away even if the virus hopefully has.
Second, it is also important to note that the push to get tough on China is not confined to any one wing of the Republican Party, and its centrality to the party’s message will not be contingent on whether Trump is or is not reelected. Many Republicans of all stripes, particularly younger Republicans with an eye toward shaping the party’s future, have long focused on China.
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri has put forward legislation to remove China’s immunity in order to hold them liable for damages caused by the coronavirus. Gov. Ron DeSantis has threatened to sue China over the virus’s effect on Florida. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Rep. Mike Gallagher have partnered on legislation cracking down on Huawei, and Cotton was among the first to criticize China on COVID-19 vocally, raising questions about the virus’s origins and battling the media over the issue, culminating in the U.S. intelligence assessment that the virus may have been accidentally released from a lab in Wuhan.
And Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who has criticized Trump at times, has also long stressed the importance of viewing competition with China as the key strategic challenge of our time, writing over a year ago that “U.S. leaders need to turn the attention of the American people to the coming long-term struggle with China.”
It was less than three months ago that Joe Biden came back to win the South Carolina primary. So yes, three months is an eternity in politics, to say nothing of the three years we have until the next Republican presidential primary debates begin.
But even in a time of incredible uncertainty on so many fronts, it seems crystal clear that no matter how the 2020 election goes, nor how the continuing coronavirus crisis unfolds, that China and dealing with the Chinese Communist Party will be at the heart of the debate over who is best to lead the Republican Party into its post-Trump future.
