Could Kamala Harris Be the Next Richard Nixon?

Project Syndicate, August 19, 2024

NEW HAVEN – Fifty years ago this month, Richard Nixon resigned as US president. With all eyes on November’s presidential election, the anniversary provides an occasion to consider the inherent contradictions of American political leadership.

Nixon’s abuses of executive power contrasted sharply with his foreign-policy achievements. As an avowed anti-communist, he surprised the world by going to China in 1972. Nixon’s triangulation strategy effectively isolated the former Soviet Union, ultimately helping to bring the Cold War to an end.

Could such a breakthrough happen again? The looming superpower clash between the United States and China certainly begs for another strategic breakthrough. The two countries, fueled by politically driven false narratives, are on a collision course with no realistic off-ramp. It wouldn’t take much – an incident in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, or an escalation of US containment policy — to ignite the high-octane fuel of conflict escalation.

Donald Trump, should he win in November, seems unlikely to resolve the US-China conflict. As he did in his first administration, he intends to lead with tariffs. Trump has proposed raising US tariffs on Chinese imports to between 50-60% after having raised them previously from 3% in early 2018 to 19% in 2020.

US-China Tariff Rates: 2018 to 2023

Source: Peterson Institute for International Economics

As was the case with Trump’s earlier tariffs, this effort would backfire. For starters, tariffs are a tax on Chinese exporters that raise prices for US consumers. According to recent research by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the additional costs from Trump’s new proposed tariffs would be at least 1.8% of GDP, nearly five times those caused by his first round of tariffs.

Second, as I have long argued, tariffs on China do not reduce the overall trade deficit for a saving-short US economy. Instead, they shift the deficit to other, largely higher-cost, foreign producers. That is what happened after Trump’s initial tariffs: the bilateral imbalance with China shrank, but increased deficits with Mexico, Vietnam, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Ireland, and Germany were more than offsetting.

Kamala Harris, by contrast, appears to have no intention to up the ante on tariffs. But she does seem inclined to endorse Joe Biden’s “small yard, high fence” doctrine, which Chinese President Xi Jinping has described as the “all-around containment, encirclement, and suppression” of China. That would include a continuation of Biden’s tariffs (largely carried over from Trump) , targeted sanctions, along with de-risking and friend-shoring strategies. While less aggressive than Trump’s potential mega-tariffs, the anti-China approach that Harris inherits from Biden would hardly de-escalate tensions.

The two candidates seem likely to hold different views on Taiwan. In a late June interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump emphasized a more transactional approach to defending Taiwan against China. He argued that, like an insurance premium, “Taiwan should pay us for defense.” Trump has taken the same stance earlier — that wealthy countries should pay for US protection – with Europe, NATO, and even Japan.

I am not in favor of a mercenary approach to American foreign policy. But I must concede that Trump’s tactics could well shift the burden of deterring China from the US to Taiwan. This could be a positive development, to the extent that it reduces direct tensions between the two superpowers. But it would still be far from a strategic recipe for conflict resolution.

While neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris are predisposed toward ending the US-China conflict, there is a potential twist that hints at a Nixonian breakthrough with China: the Harris selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a running mate.

Like former US President George H.W. Bush, who served as Chief of the US Liaison Office in Beijing in 1974-75, Walz has a special connection with China. He first traveled there as a teacher in 1989, during the tragic events in Tiananmen Square, which shaped his views on what he later described as China’s “unthinkable” tendencies. Walz even chose to get married on June 4, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen tragedy.

In light of that experience, Walz focused on Chinese human-rights issues while serving as a congressman from 2007-19. He supported a resolution commemorating the 20th anniversary of June 1989 as well as congressional actions sympathetic to Chinese activists, including Chen Guangcheng, Liu Xiaobo, and pro-democracy groups in Tibet and Hong Kong.

But, in addition to his concerns about human rights and Chinese military aggression in the South China Sea, Walz has also stressed the importance of a sustainable US-China relationship, arguing that dialogue is essential and “absolutely has to happen.” In other words, he would bring a nuanced pragmatism that is sorely missing from America’s increasingly Sinophobic stance toward China.

Vice presidents rarely shape major policy initiatives. But in this case, Walz’s views on China raise the chances of a Nixon-like initiative by a Harris administration. Both Harris and Walz stand together on their concerns about Chinese human rights and South China Sea tensions. But as pragmatic new leaders they also recognize the need to face the urgent imperative for a course correction in a troubled Sino-American relationship.

This nuanced perspective would allow them to walk and chew gum at the same time. It would encourage them to prioritize re-engagement rather than dig in their heels at every point of friction in a conflicted relationship. That’s what freed Nixon to put aside his ideological biases and engage China in 1972. Walz might well help tip the scales for President Harris’s China policy.

Many of today’s geostrategic circumstances bear an eerie similarity to the Cold War climate a half-century ago. Who better than a thoughtful new US president to mitigate a dangerous dynamic with another superpower and shift the relationship from adversarial to competitive, from conflict escalation to conflict resolution?

Under the watch of Trump and Biden, America’s China problem went from bad to worse. If Kamala Harris prevails in November, that need not be the case.