Without Allies America Can’t Match China

While the Felon and his MAGA supporters bloviate about "making America great again" - more realistically this means "make America white again" - the misguided policies of his regime, peopled with incompetent individuals and charlatans, will have the effect of making America weaker, more isolated, a place to be avoided by serious researchers, and far less healthy thanks to the idiocy of JFK, Jr., and the likes of Ron DeSantis within the GOP.  Indeed, in Florida we will likely see the return of childhood diseases once eradicated that may well include seeing a return of Polio (Florida's lunatic surgeon general has stated that children getting preventable diseases is less important than the rights of their parents) and also endanger the lives of many of Florida's vulnerable aging retirees. Meanwhile, the Felon is actively alienating allies and in the case of India, driving that nation into the arms of China.  It's as if the Felon's following orders from the Kremlin to weaken America as quickly as possible.  The overnight Russian attacks on Ukraine demonstrate that the Felon's performance at the so-called Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin, an indicted war criminal, accomplished nothing other than taking the Epstein scandal out of the headlines for a few days. A column in the New York Times makes the case that the Felon is weakening America rather than "making it great again):

For the first time in its modern history, the United States faces a rival — China — that has greater scale in most of the critical dimensions of power, and American national capacity alone may not be enough to rise to the challenge.

We are entering an era where the true measure of American primacy will be whether Washington can build what we call allied scale: the power to compete globally in tandem with other countries across economic, technological and military domains.

President Trump appears to be moving in the opposite direction. His go-it-alone, tariff-centric diplomacy has alienated allies and left openings for Beijing to build its own coalitions. Mr. Trump’s recent imposition of high tariffs on India are just one example. The United States spent three decades courting India as a geopolitical counterweight to China. But after the tariffs were applied on India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week visited China for the first time in seven years, where he and President Xi Jinping agreed to move past a recent history of tense relations and work as partners, not rivals.

Mr. Trump is playing with fire.

Throughout the 20th century, America outproduced and out-innovated Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union. But China is different. On the metrics that matter most in strategic competition, it has already surpassed the United States.

Its economy, while slowing, is still nearly 30 percent larger than America’s when one accounts for purchasing power. China has twice the manufacturing capacity, producing vastly more cars, ships, steel and solar panels than the United States and more than 70 percent of the world’s batteries, electric vehicles and critical minerals. In science and technology, China produces more active patents and top-cited publications than the United States. And militarily, it has the world’s largest naval fleet, a shipbuilding capacity estimated to be more than 230 times as great as America’s and is fast establishing itself as a leader in hypersonic weapons, drones and quantum communications.

China has its problems, such as a shrinking and aging population, excess industrial capacity, rickety state finances and high debt. But any serious U.S. strategy toward China must reckon with the Cold War aphorism “Quantity has a quality all its own.”

The rise and fall of great powers has often turned on scale — the size, resources and capacity that make a nation formidable. Once countries reach similar levels of economic productivity, those with larger populations and continental size eventually surge ahead. Britain’s first-mover advantage in the Industrial Revolution gave way once larger countries like the United States and Russia caught up. In the 20th century, America awed its enemies: Hitler called it a “giant state with unimaginable productive capacities,” and Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, admitted he could run wild in the Pacific Ocean for only so long before American industry overwhelmed Japan.

Today, that sense of daunting scale describes China. America’s best hope for matching that lies in maximizing its own strength through alliances. That means no longer treating U.S. allies as dependents under our protection, but as partners in building power jointly by pooling markets, technology, military capability and industrial capacity. Investments in American renewal are necessary, but insufficient by themselves.

Alone, the United States will be smaller compared with China by many important metrics. But together with economies such as Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan and others, there is no competition. This coalition would be more than twice China’s G.D.P. when adjusted for purchasing power, more than double its military spending, the top trading partner of most countries in the world, and would represent half of global manufacturing to China’s one-third. It would possess deeper talent pools, create more patents and top-cited research, and wield a degree of market power that could deter Chinese coercion. Allied scale would win the future.

The aim is not to contain China — an impossible goal — but to balance it. Only through partnerships can we protect our shared industrial bases, technological edge and the ability to deter China.

The Biden administration favored persuasion in winning over other countries. It helped create the Trade and Technology Council with Europe; elevated the so-called Quad grouping that combines the United States, India, Japan and Australia to balance China’s growing influence; reached a nuclear submarine deal with Australia and Britain; and struck new export control and trade arrangements.

Mr. Trump’s hardball tactics target the very economies that the United States should be pulling closer. Even his handshake trade deals with Japan, South Korea and Europe focus narrowly on reducing bilateral trade deficits, raising tariff revenue and securing vague investment pledges rather than balancing China. U.S. allies have publicly likened his approach to a “landlord seeking rent.” America’s global popularity has plummeted, even falling behind China’s in many countries.

[H]e is squandering America’s precious leverage on the wrong objectives. Instead of settling for vague pledges from trade partners, he should push them for significant and specific long-term investment in sectors that will spark American reindustrialization. Instead of focusing on trivial disputes — like trying to sell more American rice to Japan — he should press them to commit to building a multilateral tariff and regulatory wall that protects the industrial bases of the countries behind it from being hollowed out by China’s mercantilism.

It’s not too late for Washington to build allied scale, even through Mr. Trump’s coercive style. But unless the president redirects his leverage toward the goal of balancing China’s overwhelming capacity, he will leave America smaller and more isolated.

The next century, then, will be China’s to lose.