The Trump administration plans to continue carrying out its hardline China policies in the next two months before a Biden administration takes over, administration officials tell CNN.
The China hawks in the Trump administration believe that there are certain actions they can take now that will box in the Biden administration, one administration official said.
Axios first reported on these details.
And with President Donald Trump’s loss to President-elect Joe Biden, the administration is poised to move more quickly on some of the actions it was planning to take because it is less worried about the China trade deal falling apart. That fear had always handicapped their policies from swiftly being enacted, the administration official explained.
Dealing with China could well be Biden’s trickiest foreign policy challenge, CNN has reported. Biden has said there are areas where it is in the US interest to work with Beijing, including on climate change and North Korea.
Biden advisers say he will work closely with allies to present a united front on issues such as technology, including Huawei and 5G, intellectual property theft, China’s expansion in Asian waters and its moves to crush democracy in Hong Kong.
Newly-installed acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller has been told to focus in these remaining months on cyber and irregular warfare, with regard to China in particular, an administration official said.
The administration is also hoping to pressure China to come to the table for nuclear talks with the US and Russia before Trump leaves office in January, two administration officials said, though they concede that getting China to the table is a long shot.
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