The next MAGA divide is China

When Tucker Carlson released his interview with antisemitic provocateur Nick Fuentes, MAGA infighting exploded.

It’s not the first time MAGA has turned on itself over U.S. support for Israel. In June, clashes over Trump’s Mideast policy pushed him to speak out, declaring:  “I’m the one that developed America First. I’m the one that decides that.”

Trump still drives conservative politics, but his movement is no longer a monolith. Nor is Israel the only international policy issue that threatens the movement’s unity. The next fissure may be China.

On Israel, figures like Carlson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and other right-wing media personalities are calling for a restrained U.S. presence. Now, pressure is building from those who want a more aggressive approach to China.

More Trump voters disapprove of the president’s handling of China than any other foreign policy issue, according to a new public opinion poll by myself and my team at the Institute for Global Affairs.

Even as Trump makes overtures to Beijing, most of his voters continue to view China as a moderate or severe threat (83 percent), and many agree that it intends to destroy the U.S. (29 percent) or replace the world order (33 percent).

The president faces a revolt from his base on Chinese students, export controls and tariffs. More infighting may be coming.

In August, the president reversed course from his earlier crackdown on China, saying that the U.S. would grant 600,000 H-1B visas to Chinese students in the next two years. He doubled down on Wednesday, saying that welcoming H-1B visa workers is “MAGA.”

Immediate outrage came from conservative allies such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, far-right activist Laura Loomer, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and longtime Trump advisor Steve Bannon. There were also critiques by The Federalist and The Washington Post.

Trump cited international students’ high fees and value-add to the economy as informing the move. This message has not resonated with the MAGA base. Our poll found that a slight majority of Trump’s constituency agrees that Chinese students shouldn’t be allowed to study in the U.S. (53 percent).

Another critique centers on Trump’s approach to Chinese export controls.

Conservative hawks were broadly supportive of Biden-era protectionism, which married Trump 1.0’s limited China tariffs to new restrictions on American technology. Trump 2.0’s high-tariff strategy has damaged American growth, while Trump has signaled openness to exemptions on selling advanced technology like semiconductors to China.

For some, this is the worst of both worlds, as Americans are forced to pay higher costs for goods and Chinese military manufacturers gain greater access to American technology.

Trump’s former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger predicts that allowing semiconductor sales to China would be “unilaterally deindustrializing America.” Trump’s former National Security Council China director said, “We’re playing 2-D chess while Beijing is playing 4-D chess.”

Support for selling U.S. technology to China comes primarily from business interests, notably Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has argued that it’s in America’s economic interest for Chinese AI to be built with American technology — an argument that is not well-received on the right.

But tariff backlash has pushed Trump toward greater engagement with China. After Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs were threatened in April, such figures as Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Ben Shapiro and Bill Ackman broke with the president, with Rogan describing his feud with Canada as “stupid.”

They may have been on to something. Foreign trade was Trump’s second worst issue among his base, according to our polling. Last month, Trump negotiated a one-year halt to the trade war with China and lowered existing tariffs on the nation by 10 percent.

Nonetheless, many Trump voters want a clean break between the U.S. and Chinese economies. White House Senior Counsel Peter Navarro has continued to argue that U.S. industrial weakness has invited foreign aggression and that the U.S. must reshore manufacturing through high tariffs.

From their perspective, Trump can accommodate in the near-term to ease the pain of severance from China’s economy, but complete withdrawal remains the end goal. On decoupling, Bannon put it this way, “If you don’t do this, you’re always going to have the threat of the gun to your head.”

Despite these growing controversies, Trump’s net approval rating with his voters is still positive on China, with nearly twice as many Trump voters saying that he is making the situation better than worse (a net plus-16 percent).

And when asked about threats to their personal safety, Trump voters selected China competition less frequently (5 percent) than almost any other threat, including issues like climate change (11 percent) and cybersecurity (11 percent).

The president may be able to tamp down on a potential insurgency as he dictates what is and isn’t America First. However, if the conversation among MAGA today is any indication, the worst for Trump be yet to come.

 

*Ransom Miller is a research associate with the Institute for Global Affairs.

 

Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5617341-trump-maga-china-infighting/