Topic: China
“Illegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed, not reprioritized. Economic engagement with China should be ended, not rethought.”
The effect of “mass deportations” would be economic devastation. By one calculation, deporting 1 million immigrants would lead to 88,000 additional employment losses by other Americans, suggesting that Trump’s program could cost up to 968,000 Americans their jobs on top of the 7.1 million jobs held by immigrants up for deportation.” [Source]
Full contextual analysis of the foreword here.
“…incoming policy councils will need to move rapidly to lead policy processes around cross-cutting agency topics, including countering China, enforcing immigration laws, reversing regulatory policies in order to promote energy production, combating the Left’s aggressive attacks on life and religious liberty, and confronting “wokeism” throughout the federal government.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 1.1: White House Office here.
“The People’s Republic of China’s predatory trade practices have disrupted the open-market trading system that has provided mutual benefit to all participating countries—including China—for decades.”
Vought is criticizing the WTO (World Trade Organization) for failing to discipline China for their unfair trading practices. However, this study by the Cato Institute found that “If the Trump administration really does want the Chinese economy to be more market-oriented, it should make better use of WTO rules by filing more complaints against China. While it is often accused of flouting the rules, China does a reasonably good job of complying with WTO complaints brought against it.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 1.2: Executive Office of the President of the United States here.
Share this quote from Project 2025:
“Our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, our impossibly muddled China strategy, the growing involvement of senior military officers in the political arena, and deep confusion about the purpose of our military are clear signals of a disturbing decay and markers of a dangerous decline in our nation’s capabilities and will.”
It was Donald Trump and the Trump administration who orchestrated our “disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.” Read our bite-sized brief about that here.
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.1: Department of Defense here.
“By far the most significant danger to Americans’ security, freedoms, and prosperity is China.”
Miller’s position is that we must prevent China from becoming the most powerful country in the world, and says that they’re currently #2, behind the United States of America. He notes that they’re expanding their military and their nuclear capacity.
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.1: Department of Defense here.
“The most severe immediate threat that Beijing’s military poses, however, is to Taiwan and other U.S. allies along the first island chain in the Western Pacific. If China could subordinate Taiwan or allies like the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan, it could break apart any balancing coalition that is designed to prevent Beijing’s hegemony over Asia. Accordingly, the United States must ensure that China does not succeed. This requires a denial defense: the ability to make the subordination of Taiwan or other U.S. allies in Asia prohibitively difficult.”
Miller acknowledges that Russia, Iran, and North Korea also pose threats to the U.S. He goes on to argue for expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and spending more money on defense in order to meet the goal of “ensuring that China does not succeed”.
He then goes into specific reforms he recommends. Among them are increasing defense burden-sharing amongst our allies, sustaining support for Israel (who is currently committing a genocide), and expanding our nuclear arsenal in order to compete with Russia and China.
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.1: Department of Defense here.
“The U.S. government needs an Article X for China, and it should be a presidential mandate.”
Article X refers to a 1947 document written by George F. Kennan that laid out the framework for the Cold War. Skinner is arguing for the President declaring a cold war on China without congressional approval. One of the consequences would be economic decoupling (which is no accident, Kevin D. Roberts touches on the idea in the Foreword, and I cover the potential results there.
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.3: Department of State here.
“An incoming conservative President needs to use these intelligence authorities aggressively to anticipate and thwart our adversaries, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and especially China, while maintaining counterterrorism tools that have demonstrated their effectiveness.”
He will run into the same problem I outlined in section 2.3 – it’s going to be difficult to treat Russia as an enemy, when the figurehead they’ve chosen to be President is beholden to Putin, praises him regularly, and has suggested he’d “encourage Putin to do whatever the hell he wants.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.4: Intelligence Community here.
“Corporate America, technology companies, research institutions, and academia must be willing, educated partners in this generational fight to protect our national security interests, economic interests, national sovereignty, and intellectual property as well as the broader rules-based order—all while avoiding the tendency to cave to the left-wing activists and investors who ignore the China threat and increasingly dominate the corporate world.”
He’s suggesting here that industries involved in areas like cutting-edge technology and intellectual property are susceptible to foreign influence and theft, especially from China, so they must be mindful of that possibility (true). The mention of investors implies concern that financial motivations in China or from Chinese partnerships might outweigh considerations of national security or ethical concerns in corporate decision-making. It does seem disingenuous for Carmack to point fingers at the Left for making ethically dubious business decisions involving with China when Ivanka Trump received 41 fast-tracked trademarks from China after her father was elected President.
Full contextual analysis of Section 2.4: Intelligence Community here.
“…and restart the Trump Administration’s “China Initiative” (to address Chinese espionage and theft of trade secrets), which the Biden Administration “terminated…largely out of a concern for poor ‘optics.’”
The China initiative wasn’t terminated by Biden, it was refocused because Trump’s version of it resulted in disproportionately targeting Americans of Chinese descent for their race, and for leading to a number of cases dropped due to lack of evidence. In 2022, the DOJ refocused it on threats from nations, not individuals. So I guess this is a partially true statement, if you’re calling blatant racism merely “poor optics.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.