In the early weeks of the Biden administration, those of us serving on the National Security Council gathered together, read the intelligence and came to a sobering conclusion. The 2020s would be the “decisive decade” in the competition with China — the period that would determine whether the United States would fall behind its rival economically, technologically and militarily. Five years later, we are halfway through that decade. In a guest essay for Times Opinion this week, I write that while the Trump administration has made some progress in rebuilding American strength, it has also made unforced errors that risk squandering these critical years. A grave one was to initiate a trade war with China without preparation. The Trump administration spiked tariffs on China to over 140 percent but abruptly folded when President Xi Jinping throttled the flow of critical rare earth minerals and magnets in response. The two leaders reached a truce when they met in South Korea, but the damage was done. China had absorbed American pressure, successfully replied with its own and shown the world it was America’s equal in a 21st-century trial of strength. All this invites new risks. Before entering government, I wrote a book drawing from internal Chinese documents about China’s grand strategy to displace American order. I found that when Beijing believed Washington’s power was waning relative to its own, it pursued more aggressive — even dangerous — approaches abroad. Now President Xi is more confident than ever before in his belief that, as he put it, “time and momentum are on our side” and “the East is rising and the West is declining.” For Americans, the lesson is clear. China built strength deliberately; the United States must now do the same. This truce buys Americans time to reduce our dependencies. The question is whether we will use that time well — or waste what remains of this decisive decade.
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