Trump embraces great power cooperation with China and Russia
axios.com
 Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch. Photos: Getty Images
President Trump's first term opened the age of "Great Power Competition" with China and Russia.
- His second is actively working to end it.
Why it matters: For the past decade, Washington has operated on the bipartisan consensus that China seeks to overtake the United States, Russia seeks to undermine it, and reinforcing alliances in Europe and Asia is key to winning the 21st century.
- Trump is challenging that entire foundation, envisioning a new world order where great powers cut deals — and look the other way when needed — rather than restrain each other's ambitions.
What they're saying: "After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country," the White House argues in its new National Security Strategy.
- "Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests."
Catch up quick: The first Trump administration declared a genocide in Xinjiang, blacklisted Huawei, and moved to ban TikTok.
- After returning to office, Trump kicked off a spiral of U.S.-China tariffs, threats and export bans, before striking a truce with President Xi Jinping in October.
- Lately, Trump has been sounding like the biggest China dove in Washington.
Breaking it down: His administration has backed off plans to sanction China over last year's massive Salt Typhoon cyber intrusions, so as not to undermine the trade pact, Axios' Sam Sabin notes.
- As China and Japan engaged in rhetorical brinksmanship last month over Taiwan, Trump sided with Beijing and urged Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to cool it.
- Trump recently announced he'll be visiting Beijing in April, and Xi will make a return trip later in 2026.
- A U.S. official said the administration was "committed to ushering mutually beneficial trade relations with China without compromising on our national and economic security," and noted that under the October trade truce China had "agreed to crack down on fentanyl precursors, purchase U.S. agricultural products, and keep rare earths flowing."
Driving the news: This week, Trump stunned D.C.'s China hawks once again by lifting a ban on exports of Nvidia's H200 chips to China.
- The administration's bet is that selling to China will help reinforce U.S. dominance in designing the chips that power AI globally. The U.S. official noted that export controls on Nvidia's most advanced Blackwell chip remain in place.
- But it's a remarkable reversal given Trump 1.0 started construction on the high-tech firewall that Trump 2.0 is now lowering.
Trump's emerging Russia strategy mirrors his shift on China — a move away from confrontation and toward accommodation, deal-making, and a willingness to accept territorial conquest.
- Trump's envoys are pressuring Ukraine to cede the entire Donbas region to Russia and envisioning a new era of "strategic stability" with Moscow that could unlock vast commercial opportunities.
- While Trump imposed sanctions on Russia's largest oil companies over Ukraine, his team has made clear they're anxious to bring Moscow in from the cold as soon as the war is over.
- An early 28-point peace plan produced by U.S. and Russian officials calls for a "long-term economic cooperation agreement" in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, AI, data centers, rare earths and more.
The intrigue: That vision aligns with Trump's calls to bring Russia back into the G7 — from which it was expelled after the 2014 invasion of Crimea — and to treat Moscow as a great-power partner.
- Trump's National Security Strategy is notably far less hostile to Russia than to the European Union, which Trump has cast as a "decaying" project of the old liberal order.
The bottom line: In Trump's model of great-power coexistence, spheres of influence are the price of stability.
- For the U.S., that means tightening its grip on the Western Hemisphere, confronting a Venezuela backed by China and Russia — and warning both powers to stay out of America's backyard.
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