Trump has already delivered China's ambitions with "self-inflicted" wounds, an ex-GOP strategist warned ahead of the president's visit with the country's leader, Xi Jinping.
"China's ambitions, whether they are military or economic, have been delivered up by Donald Trump," Rick Wilson said on a Tuesday episode of his podcast. Trump was set to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping from May 12-15 with business leaders like Elon Musk, and Wilson noted he's going in with "cataclysmically low poll ratings" and "tremendous political weakness" amid the war in Iran.
However, while "we've lost the war in Iran," Trump started delivering "self-inflicted" wounds that benefit China's ambitions well before that, Wilson said.
"Trump starts a trade war. Almost every nation in South America is on the wrong side of Trump's trade war," Wilson explained. "What happens in South America? They cut deals with China. They're selling their products to China."
Looking at Trump's government cutbacks, Wilson said that the DOGE decision to dismantle USAID is also helping China's global standing rise above that of the United States.
"If you had gone into any African country two years ago, where there's a famine, where there's sickness, where there's poverty, where there's disease, where there's misery, you would have seen USAID workers," Wilson said. "You know what you'd see now? China. Because Elon and DOGE cut USAID and killed the program. So now those bags of food don't say, 'A gift from the people of the United States.' Now those bags of food say 'A gift from the people of the People's Republic of China.'"
Wilson predicted that as people watch Trump's visit to China, they'll see him "with a sense of discomfort, with a sense of embarrassment," even though Trump will "bluster and yell and try to pretend that he's got the strong hand here. He does not. Xi Jinping has the strong hand."