US President Donald Trump has a politically powerful pitch on China that makes sense to many American voters. This narrative guarantees mounting conflict with Beijing, triggering every negative reflex there. For the 2020 general election in the United States, the Democratic Party and individual candidates must decide whether to try to outdo Trump or develop a more productive approach. But what exactly is Trump’s pitch? To address this issue, I sifted through the Trump Twitter Archive ( www.trumptwitterarchive.com ) using the keyword “China”. Although tweets are not an exhaustive source on the Trump administration’s thinking, decisions or actions, they open a real-time window on the mind of a leader who thinks he is the “decider”. Trump cuts formal bureaucracies out of decision-making whenever possible. What do his tweets reveal about his framework, the signals he sends to Beijing, and how he plans to use his China pitch in the 2020 campaign? First, what words does Trump use most and least often in his China-related tweets? Of great significance are words entirely absent: “ human rights ”, “democracy”, “Taiwan”, “One-China policy”, “education”, “middle class” and “diplomacy”. Further, there is virtually no favourable mention of foreign-policy-relevant members of his own cabinet . By way of contrast, much more frequently used words are: “trade” (111 mentions), “Xi” Jinping (76), “tariffs” (75), “farmers” (40), “Biden” (22), “win” (21), “lose” (10) and “friend” (11). Clearly, economic issues are central to his world view. Cold-war-ish security issues figure less prominently. Also, he does not rely on or empower subordinates or experts. Human rights and democracy are not on the agenda, though Hong Kong has received some recent attention. In terms of domestic politics, Trump gives pride of place to “ farmers ” (very often capitalised). Further, he does not see China as a mix of important issues requiring trade-offs, nor does he anchor current decisions in previous policies or agreements with Beijing. His vocabulary is “win” or “lose”. Second, though Trump’s overall China pitch is unsound, it is coherent, indeed persuasive, to many US citizens who have other legitimate concerns on their minds. Elements of his pitch are: the US has drawn the short end of the stick in trade deals with China since the 1980s; even when Beijing has reached agreements with Washington in the past, it has subsequently backslid, and; China uses the revenues earned through unfair trade practices to fund its drive for military and economic dominance, “stealing” US technology along the way. The persistent and mounting trade deficit is a numerical expression of just how supposedly unfair the economic relationship is, notwithstanding that the president continually overstates the size of that deficit. Much ado about nothing: Trump’s ‘soybean solution’ to US-China trade war Trump aims to right the situation by employing means which economists may deplore, but which seem coherent and probably effective to many voters. His is not the language of trade-offs, constraints and interdependence used by bureaucrats, technocrats and experts, all of whom he characterises as “people who have tried to handle [China] before and failed miserably”. Core components of his pitch emerge with crystal clarity from the archive: use tariffs to drive up the prices of China’s exports. Compel Beijing to increase subsidies to maintain export levels, thereby forcing Chinese banks to make more bad loans to money-losing state enterprises, thereby aggravating budget problems. With costs of production in China going up, foreign direct investors will look for other countries to invest in (thereby diminishing foreign direct investment in China. All this will increase unemployment in China, slow growth there and encourage popular dissatisfaction, eventually increasing pressure on Beijing to change its policy, if not its system. All this will cause domestic capital to flee. The Chinese currency will weaken . As Trump put it in a tweet on September 3: “In the meantime, China’s Supply Chain will crumble and businesses, jobs and money will be gone!” All the while (in Trump’s inaccurate telling), China’s growing payment of tariffs to the US Treasury will do two positive things for America: buy the patience of losing sectors (the “Farmers”) and finance the build-out of infrastructure, thereby increasing US competitiveness. As he put it: “If we bought 15 Billion Dollars of Agriculture from our Farmers, far more than China buys now, we would have more than 85 Billion Dollars left over for new Infrastructure, Healthcare, or anything else. China would greatly slow down, and we would automatically speed up!” So interesting to read and see all of the free and interesting advice I am getting on China, from people who have tried to handle it before and failed miserably - In fact, they got taken to the cleaners. We are doing very well with China. This has never happened to them before! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019 This pitch appears plausible to many citizens, though it is gravely flawed. It fails to consider the impact on allies and their reluctance to get on board. It ignores the costs of the US becoming an unreliable supplier to others, and fails to consider the global costs of turmoil in China. Further, it is based on economic concepts that should have been debunked in any Economics 101 class and, even if it is substantially rhetorical, this approach fuels Beijing’s most paranoid view of Washington’s intentions – namely to contain China and keep its people down. Most importantly, the pitch distracts Americans from what they must do: govern themselves better, cooperate with allies and friends, save more, increase R&D, and make the people feel more secure in ways central to them. Why a Kentucky election is bad news for Trump and China The Trump Twitter Archive signals that Trump intends for China to be an important plank in his re-election platform. Democrats should deeply consider how to communicate an alternative vision that is consistent with the facts, conducive to a better future and politically effective. This vision also should give Beijing an incentive to be more reciprocal in its dealings with the US and others. Some Democratic Party candidates will feel forced to choose between pandering and losing. Trump’s tweets reveal other elements of his China pitch to voters, beyond rallying cries like “we don’t want to be servants to the Chinese” : • “Biden would be China’s Dream Candidate”, according to one of Trump’s posts. In the president’s telling, former vice-president Joe Biden, Trump’s predecessors and Democrats let China victimise the American people and Biden allegedly did so for his family’s financial interests. • “The reality is, with the Tariffs, the economy has grown more rapidly in the United States and much more slowly in China.” • Trump policies have pushed off the day when the Chinese economy overtakes the US economy. (“Our Economy, because of our gains in the last 2½ years, is MUCH larger than that of China.”) • Under Trump, the US has a whole of society response to Chinese spying and intellectual property theft. The question for the future is: how different will the Democratic Party’s platform be? David M. Lampton is Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at Stanford University’s Asia-Pacific Research Centre and Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins SAIS