Is the US losing the race against China? - Analysis/ Trump's policies are deepening the gap between the superpowers
The United States is losing the race to China. It's not a conclusion many would have drawn six months ago, but it now seems inevitable. Since taking office, President Donald Trump's administration has taken many steps that favor its main adversary.
For decades, China followed the adage of leader Deng Xiaoping to “hide your strength and bide your time.” Unfortunately, most Western countries saw China only as a new, huge market for Western goods, services, and capital. When Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, Beijing no longer needed to wait and began to show its strength.
In the past decade, China has expanded its military spending by 800 percent, the largest military increase in peacetime history. The country now has more ships at sea than the United States and is modernizing its nuclear arsenal, aiming to catch up with Russia and the United States by the end of the decade.
But China’s economic, scientific and technological advances are more worrisome. Seventy percent of the world’s countries now trade more with China than with the United States, with more than half of them trading twice as much with Beijing. Today, the Asian superpower leads the world in sectors such as electric vehicles and batteries, robotics, quantum communications, renewable technologies and many others. According to one study, 20 years ago the United States surpassed China in 60 of 64 key technologies for defense, energy, computing, biotechnology and more. Now, Beijing leads in 57 of them.
As it stands, China holds almost 50 percent of the world’s reserves of rare earth metals, controls 70 percent of the mines of these metals, and accounts for 90 percent of global refining capacity. It also controls over 90 percent of critical magnet production, and successfully used this monopoly to force the Trump administration to back down from its escalating tariff war.
Even in areas where the United States has a lead, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, China is catching up. The launch of DeepSeek shocked the tech community with its speed and sophistication, as it nearly matched much more expensive models developed by American companies. The next generation of DeepSeek could surpass even the most advanced models from OpenAI and other firms.
America has many advantages in this race, but in the past six months, the Trump administration has begun systematically to erode some of them. The biggest advantage is that the US has allies, while China has customers. Together, the United States and its allies can outcompete each other on spending, innovation, trade, and financing. But Washington’s allies in North America, Europe, and Asia are increasingly concerned that the current “America First” policy is leaving them behind. This is causing partners to turn to each other and reduce their military, economic, and political ties with Washington.
The Trump administration is also weakening the country by cutting support for research and restricting immigration. For decades, federal funding and open immigration policies have fueled major scientific and technological advances through the nation’s research universities. Recent actions are threatening this innovation ecosystem. As a result, many scientists are considering leaving the U.S. to work elsewhere.
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