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Will America's global retreat open new doors for Beijing? Insights from Bill Bishop
Listen: In seven short weeks, the Trump administration has completely reshaped US foreign policy and upended trade alliances. Will China benefit from US retrenchment and increasing global uncertainty, or will its struggling economy hold it back? On the GZERO World Podcast, Bill Bishop, a China analyst and author of the Sinocism newsletter, joins Ian Bremmer for a wide-ranging conversation about China—its domestic priorities, global administration, and whether America’s retreat from global commitments is opening new doors for Beijing.
President Xi Jinping has consolidated power and control in China, but its economy is still dealing with sluggish growth, a property market in crisis, and the specter of deflation. Yet Xi is confident he can bring the People’s Republic into a new era, pushing through major structural reforms, working to transition to a more high-tech economy, and ramping up territorial aggression in the South China Sea. So what’s next for the People’s Republic? Can China shake its economic blues? Has the Trump administration's foreign policy approach created new opportunities for Beijing to expand its influence? Bishop and Bremmer break down China's political and economic landscape.
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What is President Trump's stance on China?
What exactly is President Trump’s view on China? In the first few months of his presidency, Trump has radically reshaped US foreign policy and international relationships. Often, he’s appeared tougher on America’s allies, like the EU, than adversaries, like China and Russia. On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down Trump’s complicated views on the People’s Republic, which can be, at times, hard to pin down. Trump had a friendly pre-inauguration call with Chinese President Xi Jinping and often calls him a “brilliant guy.” Yet, in the same breath, he also complains that China “takes advantage” of the US, and his administration says it's pulling back from Europe to focus on security in the Pacific. So where does the US-China relationship go from here? Will Trump cut a deal with Beijing, or will China hawks in Trump’s cabinet, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, convince the president to be more aggressive?
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Elon tries to DOGE China
Trump has deployed his most disruptive weapon yet against China. Will it work? #PUPPETREGIME
Watch more of GZERO's award-winning PUPPET REGIME series!
Is President Trump's Russia pivot a win for China?
Is the Trump administration’s rapid shift in diplomatic relations with Russia and push for a ceasefire deal in Ukraine a win for China? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer asked US Senator Elissa Slotkin for her reaction to the 90-minute phone call between President Trump and Vladimir Putin, a move that upended three years of US-led efforts to isolate Russia from the West diplomatically. Slotkin, a former CIA officer, and Pentagon official warned that China is closely watching how the US handles Ukraine, viewing it as a test of America’s resolve that could have major implications for Taiwan and global stability. The Trump administration has made it clear it doesn’t want to play global peacemaker and that Europe needs to step up to maintain its own defenses. With global power dynamics quickly shifting, will America maintain its leadership role or leave a leadership vacuum for China to fill?
“This is a bigger issue than just Russia-Ukraine. The Chinese are watching everything that’s going on here,” Slotkin says, “They’re watching American staying power. They’re trying to understand if America cares about democracies getting invaded or if they’ll roll over eventually.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
DeepSeek puts US-China relations on edge
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How is China's AI app DeepSeek disrupting the AI industry?
It certainly seems to be making people concerned that the Chinese are a lot closer to the Americans and the Trump administration is not sleeping on this. They clearly feel that China is technologically very capable, very advanced. Frankly, different than Biden felt when he first became president, though he got up to speed on that pretty quickly. And I think that's going to lead to a much tougher competition between the United States and China. Those that think that a deal is coming, that Trump is going to engage with China because he wants to find a way to not have to put tariffs on, I don't think that's going to happen because you're going to have so much more efforts to contain the Chinese in all sorts of areas of advanced technology broadly speaking.
They are way ahead in data. The Americans are ahead in compute, and they're both going to lean into the opportunities that they have. And the Americans are going to use their firepower from a government perspective with other countries around the world as well. That's what I think.
Trump has issued a 90-day pause on nearly all US foreign aid. What's the likelihood it'll be extended beyond that?
I don't know how long it's going to be extended, but I do know that so many of the contractors that are involved, for example, USAID, which is like half of their capable workforce, are gone. And within 30 days they then lose their security clearances and they're not going to have capability to execute. So I think there will be permanent damage to the ability of the Americans to actually get a lot of development programs done around the world, and this is an important piece of US soft power.
And if the Americans aren't doing it, other countries around the world will, most particularly China,. This is an opportunity for the Chinese to have more influence, especially in the Global South than the United States. And this is pennywise and pound foolish for the Americans. And unlike the suspension of domestic support and funding and programs, which led to a whole bunch of outrage and then the order was rescinded, on foreign aid there's not a lot of domestic outrage. And companies don't want to stick their necks out because they think that they're going to get whacked hard by the Trump administration. So, I think it's more likely to have a longer-term impact.
What do I make of the Rwandan-backed rebels' advancements in Congo?
Definitely it is expanding the civil war. A lot of Congolese are really unhappy that this is happening with the support of external actors. You've seen a bunch of embassies in Congo ransacked, a lot of riots as a consequence, and not a lot of interest in trying to resolve the problem other than from folks like the United Nations who are pretty weak on the ground. So like we're seeing in Sudan, in Congo, an expanding civil war that is causing a lot of humanitarian hardship and havoc. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
How Trump's assertive foreign policy impacts international relations
And the response by President Trump was immediately 25%, maybe 50% tariffs, and shut off visas and shut down diplomatic engagement. And there was immediate response by President Petro that was over the top, and as Trump's own responses are over the top, and going to completely hit the Americans back really hard. Now, America is Colombia's most important trade partner, and the size of these countries is a little bit different. And within a couple of hours, Petro very quietly accepted Trump's terms. The deported Colombians will be accepted back in Colombia, and the trade war with Colombia is in our rearview mirror. Not really a surprise.
So Trump is going out there, and he's saying all these extraordinary, extravagant things. Huge exaggerations about what he demands and what he wants. And if you're Colombia, the response was absolutely on par. I mean, the post that we saw from President Petro, who is also kind of a populist firebrand on the left, isn't enormously popular, frankly, and has had a lot of difficulty in passing economic policies. But he gave it a shot and it was entertaining to watch and read and a lot of Colombians responded well to it. It felt like good old nationalism. And of course, he had to back down. Why? Because you're not allowed to do the same thing that Trump is. It's not just about who's right, it's also about who's powerful. And Trump's more than happy to hit him with a stick. And so that turned out to be a loss pretty quickly for the Colombian government.
There are a lot of other countries that are working the same way. I see this happening with Mexico where the Mexican president has been incredibly careful. US is the most important relationship. Suddenly they are seizing enormous amounts of fentanyl. More in one seizure than they've done in four years under Biden and showing Trump, "Look at what we can accomplish because we know this is important to you." And working to get Chinese trade and investment that is problematic and coming through to the United States out of Mexico and willing to put more money and resources, people on Mexico's southern border to reduce the numbers of people that are coming through Mexico into the United States. They desperately don't want to fight with the Americans. They're going to make a lot of offers. Call it defense. Call it capitulation. But that's definitely what you're seeing.
I see this from Denmark, which is publicly trying to say nothing. There've been some leaks. But in general it's been very careful both from Denmark and all of the Nordic leaders I've spoken to, they've been very, very careful. Nothing public about the challenges that they're having. Of course, privately completely unacceptable that the United States would make demands of Greenland and wouldn't work through a very stalwart, though small, ally. The Danes who do everything the Americans ask in terms of coordinating on military exercises and providing multilateral support when the Americans want more participation in different wars or humanitarian support. You name it, the Danes are there. But that didn't matter to Trump. He said, "I want Greenland."
And they are privately trying really hard to get this out of the headlines to say nothing that would be provocative, not respond the way the Colombian President did, not get Trump to do anything even more angry. And instead, find a way to keep Greenland a part of Denmark, don't vote for independence and keep the alliance stable. Most places around the world, that's what they're doing. They're acting like Mark Zuckerberg and Meta and all of those tech titans that have given the money and have gone down to Mar-a-Lago and are saying, "No, we've always loved you Trump and we want to work with you and please don't hurt us."
But there are a few exceptions and I think it's worth mentioning who I think they are. Exception number one, this may surprise you: Canada. Canada is an exception not because they're unfriendly with the US, not because they don't depend on the US, but because they have an election coming up. Their government fell apart. And now everybody in Canada is angry at the United States with all of this threat of tariffs and we want more money for the Americans for security, and you guys should be a 51st state. Not only are the liberals angry, the conservatives are angry and they have to outdo each other to be tough on Trump in the United States or they think they're going to lose the election upcoming. So the fact is that Trump, I think, made a strategic mistake in going after Canada early because the Canadians are not in the position to respond well given the election.
The other two exceptions, the Europeans who want to be constructive with the US but have a stronger position if they can be collective through the EU and on some areas they can. On Russia-Ukraine, they can be collective, which has helped them bring Trump closer to the European position on Russia-Ukraine in the last three months than he was when he was initially elected. On trade, on tariffs, on China, Europe is more collective and has more regulatory force as long as they can act together. That is going to continue to happen, gives them more leverage, vis-a-vis the Americans.
And then finally the Chinese who don't act collectively, but they are stronger as an individual country. And they're going to be much tougher to engage with as we saw with the first phase one, phase two trade deal. It took a very long time to sort of come together and then they didn't actually uphold a lot of what they promised. A lot of decent conversations, but the Chinese were much more willing to lecture Marco Rubio in their first call with the US Secretary of State than anyone else he has spoken with around the world. Why is that? Because the Chinese want to show they're not going to be pushovers and that they are tougher and bigger and stronger and can hit back the way that many other countries cannot. What does that mean for US-China relationship? Probably going to get worse before it gets better. That would be my bet at this point. But we'll see how much of a deal Trump really wants.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Trump's Davos address sets up big shifts in US strategy
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to close out our week in Davos, Switzerland.
Want to talk about now President Trump's address; virtual, direct to everybody, collected yesterday, assembled yesterday, to hear his speech, and then to ask a few pre-planned questions. The speech itself, at the beginning, not all that surprising, "America's back open for business. Everything was horrible before. Everything's going to be great, now." Not a surprise, kind of exaggerated. You'd never think that the US was by far the strongest-performing economy in the advanced industrial world, coming out of the pandemic. But people roll their eyes a bit, they get on getting on. There was still a fair amount of news that was actually made, and some interesting thoughts about where the initial Trump administration is going to go.
First point, on OPEC, talks a lot about Saudi Arabia directly, Mohammed bin Salman. They're very close, they've worked together closely. Not only when he was president the first time, it was his first trip as president back in 2017, but since then. A lot of business with the family as well. And has been promised $600 billion to invest in the United States directly. That beats the $500 billion announcement that the AI giants have just made in what they're going to do, this Stargate project. He likes that. He said, "Why don't you up it to a trillion?" That's a round number. Good thing we're base-10 in this country. Anyway, the fact that Trump is interested in engaging very closely with the Saudis, not a surprise at all, there is going to be a very big push to try to ensure that Saudi Arabia moves on normalization of relations with Israel. Given the fact that there's no two-state solution on the table for the Palestinians, that's challenging, but I wouldn't count it out, frankly.
Secondly, a lot of talk about oil and the fact that Trump really doesn't like where oil prices are right now. Now, the Americans are going to try to pump more, but he knows that there's only so much that can be done in the near term, maybe another 500,000 barrels a day. OPEC, on the other hand, has over four million barrels that are off the market. Why? Because they're willing to ensure that prices are comparatively high. And if that means they lose a little bit of market share, they're happy to do that. Well, Trump doesn't like that one bit, and especially because he wants to hit Iran hard, and take more of their oil off the market. He doesn't want prices to go up, so he wants the Saudis to lean in. How are they going to react? We'll see. Something at least nominal in the near-term, that brings prices maybe down towards, let's say, $70, as opposed to roughly $80, where they've been, that would be interesting to see. I wouldn't put it past the Saudis at all to lean in on that.
Secondly, China. We are going to now see tariffs early on China, 10% across the board, February 1. Markets seem to like the fact that, on the first day, Trump didn't do anything, but a few days later, is that really much better? What was interesting about the conversation, Trump is trying to make it very clear, he doesn't have an ideological beef with China. He continues to speak broadly, more warmly about Xi Jinping, and specifically about China, than generally President Biden has. That's not all that different from the first term, but it's different from expectations over the past few months. And I do expect we're going to see a summit meeting relatively soon, even though there's been no announcements around it. Having said all of that, the fact that the US has a really tough take on China, not only bilaterally but also versus all these other countries, Trump wants to punish the Europeans to ensure that they coordinate with the US on China, wants to ensure the Mexicans, the Indians, the Vietnamese, and others don't allow Chinese goods into the US through their countries.
It's very hard for the US and China to maintain a stable relationship when Trump's going to respond to China, "Well, that's our business. Those are relations with other countries. You have nothing to say about it." They're really stuck on this, and I expect that, despite maybe a bit of a honeymoon, which I wasn't thinking we'd have a few weeks ago, the US-China relations are still going to get a lot more challenging over the coming months.
And then we have Russia. And I thought it was very interesting that when Trump was asked, "So, next year at Davos, if you were here, is the war going to be over between Russia and Ukraine?" Because, of course, he's been saying, "I can end the war in a day." Then he's saying, "100 days." Now, he's saying, "Actually, the Ukrainians are ready for a deal." And by the way, that's true. But you're going to have to ask the Russians. Well, that's very different from, "I can get the deal done very easily."
He also continues to lean into the fact that the Chinese can be useful here, and that's true. That's something that the Biden administration and Trump administration actually agree pretty strongly on, that China has a lot more direct leverage over Russia than the United States does. And there's only so much the US can do with additional sanctions to convince the Russians to stop. Now, Trump can say that Russia needs to end the war, and that this is hurting them, but Putin doesn't actually feel that way. Certainly isn't prepared to accept less than the territory that he's presently occupying. So that, to me, is very interesting.
I would say the place that Trump has moved the most in the last three months, moved specifically towards the position that the Europeans have, and they're a lot less panicked about it now than they were even a week ago, is on the Russia-Ukraine issue. No one here in Europe, not one European leader I spoke with, now believes that Trump is going to basically throw Zelenskyy under the bus. And that's absolutely not where they were even, let's say, in December. So, that's a big deal.
That doesn't mean that the Europeans are feeling comfortable about Trump because, of course, Trump does not like Europe. Does not like a consolidated Europe, doesn't think a strong Europe is good for the United States. He wants to deal with individual European countries, and he wants to deal, of course, preferably with more Europe-first types in those individual countries. So, it's not the British Prime Minister, it's not the German Chancellor. It's organizations like the Reform Party and AFD. And, of course, Giorgia Meloni from Italy. He also bitterly complains about all the regulations, all the taxes, how hard it is to do business in Europe, how hard it is to do business with Europe. And that is a big challenge for Europe, that understands they need to be more competitive, but isn't prepared to spend the money, isn't capable of coordinating to get the kind of industrial policy done that the Americans are now doing.
So, on defense, on Ukraine, existential threat from Russia, Europe's doing a lot more coordination with the United States. On the economy, which concerns the Europeans equally much, and technology, where the Americans are a clear leader and leaning in very heavily, and the regulations are only going to get more comfortable and aligned with the technology companies, those that remain, the regulations, that is, not the tech companies, the Europeans are in very serious trouble.
So, that's it from me. I hope you all guys are well, and I'll talk to you all from New York next week.
How Biden’s presidency will be remembered
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
This is what we're watching in US Politics this week: One question that's going to be debated for a long time in the coming years is what is President Biden's legacy? I think there are a couple of things that he's going to be remembered for.
The first is the extraordinarily chaotic global environment over which he presided. Republicans will tie this back to the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan that President Biden presided over. But following that, you had the Russian invasion in Ukraine and the events of October 7th in the Middle East that led to the ongoing war there that is just now starting to look like it's settling down. But this is clearly going to be one of the background themes of any assessments of President Biden's legacy.
Biden's now one of four one-term presidents in the last 50 years, and one of the reasons that he lost was of course inflation. And inflation, you could argue was fueled by the pandemic or you could argue it was fueled by early actions taken by the Biden administration to spend a lot of money, perhaps more money than was necessary. But either way, the inflationary story of 2021 and 2022 is going to be remembered as one of his key legacies and one of the reasons that he lost reelection. Now that loss to Donald Trump, allowing probably one of the more controversial presidents in certainly recent American history, to come back into office and mount an unprecedented political comeback is also going to be part of Biden's legacy. Because of the fact that he decided that he was able to run even at his advanced age, that blocked out the Democrats from having an opportunity to hold a primary and then forced the Democrats to change horses midstream and move over to Kamala Harris in the middle of the election cycle, who of course lost to Trump. That is also going to be part of his legacy.
And it's unclear. Biden thinks, says it publicly, he could have won election if he just stayed in. He's 82 years old. He'd be the oldest president ever if he did, and there's obvious decline in his faculties over the course of the year. But more importantly, the American people really started to lose confidence in Biden as time went on this year. So not at all clear that he would've won that election or that any other Democrat could have won that election if there were a primary process. But his sticking around and the White House staff and other Democratic operatives that covered for the age-related decline that he was experiencing is also going to be a part of President Biden's election.
Probably one of the more consequential things I think he's going to end up having done over the longer term is increasing the US confrontation with China, particularly over technology policy. The world is at a critical juncture when it comes to the advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence. And the wall that the Biden administration has been trying to erect around Chinese access to US advanced technologies is going to have ripple effects and repercussions for years to come. The Trump administration's likely to continue a lot of that, and this could potentially be an inflection point in 10 years time as we look back and look at the two different tech ecosystems that are being built out. A lot of that legacy is going to trace back to the Biden administration.
So that's a pretty complex, mixed legacy. The US doesn't have lot of one-term presidents in recent history. Most one-term presidents aren't remembered that fondly. Presidents like George H.W. Bush look a lot better in the long distance of history, whereas President Jimmy Carter who recently passed away still has a bit of a mixed legacy. And that's probably where Biden's going to end up.
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