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A policy group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence is warning that President Trump is risking his legacy on China policy with his approach to Beijing on TikTok, tariffs and national security measures.
The Advancing American Freedom Foundation released a memo Tuesday obtained first by The Hill that argued Trump in his second term was “walking away” from the tough-on-China approach he took during his first administration, when Pence served as vice president.
“To beat China, President Trump must return to his first administration’s ‘Tough on China’ approach, not bow down to Beijing,” the memo states.
The memo outlines a few key areas where Pence’s group argues Trump is not doing enough to counter Chinese influence.
It points to the Trump administration’s handling of TikTok, where the president has granted repeated extensions of a deadline for the video-sharing app’s parent company to divest or face a U.S. ban.
Congress last year passed a law that required TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to sell the app amid growing privacy and national security concerns. If it failed to do so, TikTok would be banned from U.S. networks and app stores.
“By launching its own TikTok account, the White House mocks the rule of law and invites CCP spyware onto White House phones,” the memo states.
Trump last week called security concerns about TikTok “highly overrated.”
“I’m a fan of TikTok. My kids like TikTok, young people love TikTok,” Trump told reporters. “If we can keep it going good. And we’re going to watch the security concerns.”
Pence’s group was also critical of Trump’s agreement with Nvidia to provide 15 percent of its revenue generated from selling artificial intelligence chips to China. The memo argues the agreement “plays right into Beijing’s playbook of obtaining foreign trade secrets through coercion or theft and displacing foreign competitors.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has argued the administration is only giving China Nvidia’s “fourth best” chip. Trump has said he brokered the arrangement as part of a deal “for our country.”
And the memo from the foundation takes aim at Trump’s tariffs, which the Pence-founded group says have “kneecapped American small businesses, which overwhelmingly rely on Chinese goods and lacked adequate time to rearrange supply chains in response to tariffs.”
Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on dozens of trading partners, including major economies like Japan, South Korea, the European Union, China and Canada. He has also imposed or threatened tariffs on specific goods, such as steel and aluminum, copper, automobiles, furniture and semiconductors.
Pence, some Republicans, Democrats and economists have warned that the tariffs will lead to higher prices and disproportionately hurt small businesses that can’t negotiate a workaround.
Trump has defended his use of tariffs, arguing that the U.S. has been ripped off for years. He has also pointed to revenue coming into the U.S. from tariffs, even as critics argue that revenue amounts to a tax on consumers.
The president has more broadly asserted he has a positive relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping and expressed a desire to see both countries do well. Trump told reporters on Monday he planned to visit China later this year or “shortly thereafter.”
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