Trump's China reset shakes up global geopolitics

US president's legacy will be defined by his full-spectrum confrontation with Beijing

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2025-05-07 us china

U.S. President Donald Trump greets former U.S. Sen. David Perdue during Perdue's swearing-in ceremony as U.S. ambassador to China at the White House in Washington on May 7.  © Reuters

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the independent New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of nine books, including "Water: Asia's New Battleground" (Georgetown University Press), which won the Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

U.S. President Donald Trump's most consequential legacy may be his strategic pivot to confront China. For decades, successive American administrations pursued a policy of integrating China into the global economy, believing that economic liberalization would gradually lead to political reform. That gamble failed. Trump, during his first term, was the first U.S. president to openly acknowledge this failure and recalibrate policy accordingly.

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