Marko Papic, Macro-Geopolitical Chief Strategist, BCA Research will lead a conversation on China at The Montgomery Summit 2026.
If only Nixon could go to China – as the old adage goes – can only Trump cook up a détente with Beijing?
President Trump took the fight to China in 2016, campaigning on a staunchly protectionist and mercantilist platform, and then launched a tariff broadside not seen since the 1930s. While he greased the wheels of the trade war with lip service to traditional national security concerns, he also concluded a trade deal in the waning months of his presidency. That deal was named Phase I because, presumably, other phases were to follow.
Then the pandemic occurred, and everything went awry. The US public sharply turned against China, Trump’s rhetoric sharpened in the hope of winning the 2020 election, and then the Biden administration and its army of liberal hawks did what Democratic administrations do best: go Uber Hawk in order to compensate for a thin resume on national security.
Eight years of ever-ratcheting US-China tensions have done what? Not much.
For one, US-China total trade is down. For the US, total trade with China peaked in 2022-2023 at above $700bn, but it is now under $500bn. For China, too, the US matters less. Total US-China trade equated to a whopping 8% of GDP in 2010, but is now around 2.5% of GDP.
I don’t buy it. In the same period that total trade between the US and China supposedly declined, China’s total trade with the world almost doubled! How is that possible? Beijing still finds ways to get into the American market, often via third countries that the US cannot dictate policy to.
On another front, the US has effectively shut many Chinese technology companies out of Western markets. At the same time, Huawei has staged a major resurgence, reclaiming its position as a top smartphone vendor and a dominant force in 5G. Chinese innovation continues, in both consumer electronics and AI. Powered both by domestically produced semiconductors using Western capex machines and by actual Western semiconductors themselves, the US policy of playing national security tech whack-a-mole has failed.
These outcomes are not bugs; they are features of a multipolar world. A close study of the nineteenth century would have helped American policymakers realize that, in a multipolar regime, enemies trade with one another. Not because they lack foresight or understanding of geopolitics, but because their own allies will cheat to get to final demand. A unified Germany was the revanchist power in the late nineteenth century. And while the UK, France, and Russia joined in a military alliance to counter it, they all scrambled over each other to sell it advanced technology.
In a multipolar world, alliances are brittle and malleable. Because of this, allies cheat. It pays to be geopolitically promiscuous. As such, it makes no sense for the US to not trade with China when its own allies will go behind its back and do so.
President Trump understands this, which is why I think that the big surprise of 2026 may be a much more definitive détente between China and the US than you think!
I am really excited to host a panel on China at the forthcoming Montgomery Summit. One of my panelists will be Michael Mazarr of RAND, who recently co-authored a brilliant report titled Stabilizing the US-China Rivalry. The report both argues that stabilization of the relationship is an inherent global good and that it is possible. I want to ask Mazarr about his thesis, particularly the part of the report where he and his co-authors essentially accuse much of the American establishment of misreading much of Chinese internal propaganda and then reselling it back to the US public as hostile, hawkish rhetoric. I also want to ask him how his report has been received.
On one hand, with tensions and passions high, it is inevitable that the idea of détente will face a lot of pushback. On the other, America currently has a sitting president that does not really seem to care about pushback.
If only Nixon could go to China… only Trump can serve us with détente.
by Guest Author, Marko Papic, Macro-Geopolitical Chief Strategist, BCA Research
