World

Donald Trump's public tough-guy posturing on China masks a stunning capitulation to Beijing. When Pentagon officials presented a draft National Defense Strategy last fall that characterized China as the top U.S. security threat — the same assessment his own first administration endorsed — Trump ordered it rewritten in friendlier terms.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Heather Somerville, Alexander Ward, and Gavin Bade, Trump "balked" at the Pentagon assessment and commanded his deputy to soften the language. The revised National Defense Strategy published in January struck an entirely different tone.

"President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China," the document now declares — a stunning reversal from the bipartisan consensus that characterized China as the most consequential U.S. adversary.

The shift represents a seismic policy reversal. Trump's own first-term defense strategy took the same hardline approach the Pentagon recommended. Now Trump 2.0 is discarding that bipartisan framework in favor of a new mantra: "Don't rock the boat."

The capitulation goes far deeper than rhetoric. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has imposed a stranglehold on China policy, requiring his personal sign-off for any China-related actions. The result is Kafkaesque: senior Commerce officials sit waiting by Lutnick's office or watch for his car outside the building before pursuing routine China policy actions.

Other agencies have resorted to workarounds, pursuing a ban on a China-linked router maker by strategically avoiding naming either the company or China in the official order — essentially hiding policy from public view.

The reversal has alarmed Trump's own national security aides. China hawks in the administration have adopted gallows humor, calling the shift the "Busan Freeze," referencing the South Korea meeting between Trump and Xi that produced a fragile trade detente.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other officials appealed to Trump to walk back tariffs and dial down the trade war so minerals could flow from China again — an apparent capitulation to economic pressure over strategic security.

The pivot was deliberate and premeditated. Trump initially asked national security advisers to develop a harder line on China's technological encroachment. But the president later abandoned the restrictions, and in April, Trump fired Douglas Feith and other China hawks from the National Security Council, dismantling the directorate that had coordinated administration actions on tech and China.

Against a president who fancies himself a master dealmaker, China is clearly winning, the Journal is reporting.