May 22, 2025 • 19 mins
The trade war between the US and China is on pause, with both sides hoping to agree on a new trade deal by early August. But questions remain about how realistic that timetable could be, given the challenges facing the world’s two largest economies, who both collaborate and compete with one another.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Former US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns joins host David Gura to discuss the trade war, the challenges facing his successor and what he’s telling foreign policy students who are worried about the future of diplomacy. “We’ve gotta steel ourselves for the next decade or two to a historic competition with China. And China right now is stronger.”
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The trade war between the US and China is on pause.
Officials from both countries have lowered tariffs temporarily, and they've
agreed to keep talking. Both countries hope they'll be able
to draft a new trade deal by early August. Wall
Street welcomed that news, but it is an ambitious timetable,
and I wanted to get a better sense of how
realistic it is that in ninety days the US and
(00:30):
China could resolve their differences and the trade war between
the world's two largest economies could end. So I called
up Nicholas Burns, who was the US ambassador to China
under President Biden. It's one of the toughest jobs in government.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
You've got to both defend and push and resist on
one hand, and then you've got to stretch out your
hand to work with them and shake their hand on
the other. But that makes for a very complicated relationship.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Burns's job in Beijing was the capstone of a decade's
long career diplomat. He's held senior jobs under Republican and
Democratic presidents. Now, Burns is a professor of diplomacy and
international relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, which is where
I sat down with him this week to talk about
what he says is the most important relationship that the
United States has. I'm David Gura, and this is the
(01:22):
big take from Bloomberg News Today. On the show, Nicholas Burns,
the former US Ambassador to China, on the trade war,
the challenges facing his successor, who was just confirmed by
the US Senate, and what he's telling his students at Harvard.
We're worried about the future of diplomacy. I want to
(01:45):
start with the meetings that took place over the weekend
in Geneva, and I'm curious how you look at the
way they unfolded and the outcome of them.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Do you see it as a positive step?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Well, first of all, I started from a first principle,
and that is that China's been the largest and most
important disruptor in the global trade system for about three decades.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Right now.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
There's a reason why the United States and many other
countries around the world have placed terraces on China. China's
manufactured exports, in particular, is because China has been dumping
them around the world below the cost of production and
it's been a killer for jobs both in the United
States historically in the last several decades, but also around
the world. So I have a degree of sympathy for
(02:29):
the situation that President Trump and his team inherited, which
was a situation that we left when I left in
mid January as ambassador to China. The Chinese are trying
to act now is that they're the innocent party, that
they're the victim of this trade war by President Trump,
and that they're the responsible party, when in fact the
reality is quite different.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Having said that, these are going.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
To be very very difficult negotiations over the next ninety days,
I think in the end, self interest and logic will
prevent both sides need an agreement. China's our third largest
trade partner. About a million American jobs depend on trade
with China. Manufacturing jobs in China depend on trade with
(03:12):
the United States. So neither country can afford to sunder
the economic ties and the millions of interactions that our
private sector has had with the Chinese economy over the
last forty years. And I think in the end there
will be a trade agreement, but getting there, I think
is going to be extraordinarily difficult.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
During your tenure, you were trying to, if I may,
rehabilitate a relationship that had worsened during the first Trump administration,
develop conduits for communication, re establish economic and security ties.
When you left that post, could you've envision this turning
out the way that it has in terms of how
the rhetoric has been ratcheted up, the tariffs have been
put in place. Is it the worst case that you
(03:51):
envisioned or worse yet?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Still, I certainly did not anticipate one hundred and forty
five percent American terrorists on China or one hundred and
twenty five percent on Chinese tariffs on American goods, and
the trade war that has resulted effectively led to a
trade embargo as of the past week, when no ships
were sailing with goods back and forth, when manufacturers couldn't
(04:13):
export to each other's countries, and you see the significant
shortage of goods that traditionally are important to both economies.
So I didn't expect that to happen at all. We're
the two largest global economies, so we have a profound
impact on the health of global economy. But we also
need the global economy to be functioning in a rational
and stable way, and I think you know, we're not
(04:35):
anywhere close to being out of the woods. If the
levels now are set at thirty percent tariffs on the
American side imposed on China and ten percent by China
imposed on the United States, those are historically high levels,
and a lot of trade will not be able to
take place. It just simply won't be economical.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
A minute ago, you spoke about how China is portraying
not just the talks, but the way that this trade
war is unfolded. How effective you think that is. Do
they walk away from this feeling like they have the
upper hand. Do you think the world views them as
having the upper hand in these negotiations.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Well, the Chinese press, the nationalist press, and to an extent,
the government of China have been saying that they held out,
that they stood strong, and that they faced up to
the American tariff threats and they did not blink. And
they've been trumpeting that line in the global South. President
she just hosted most of the major leaders from South
(05:29):
America at a major summit he's been making. He made
a trip in Southeast Asia to the Asian country. So
they clearly are signaling to the United States. You're not
going to bully us. We have other options. You've seen
a big increase in Chinese manufactured exports to their neighbors.
So yes, the government of China is trying to portray
itself as the steady, solid country that stood up to
(05:53):
the United States. I think that China needs a deal too.
There's a reason why the Chinese met with Secretary of Vessant.
The economy is slowing down. They're facing lower GDP growth
for the next five to ten years. They have a
property crisis that continues to linger. They have a consumption problem.
The Chinese people are not consuming in a rational way,
(06:15):
sitting on their money because of the uncertainty of the
investment environment in China itself. They have strength in the
Chinese economy, enormous strengths.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
But they also have these weaknesses.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
China could not afford a sustained trade war with the
United States. That's why they were at the table, and
that's why they've agreed to a deal in ninety days.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
What did you learn being there about that country's capacity
to whether something like this. So you're saying they couldn't
sustain it long term, but give us some insight into
how they had been preparing for a moment like this
one where there would be this kind of geopolitical test.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I was in China, of course, during the presidential election,
our presidential election of November twenty twenty four, and as
soon as President Trump was declared the winner in that
election and prepared to office, the Chinese began to prepare
for a trade war. They saw it coming. They had
listened to Canadate Trump. They've did a lot of remobilization
of their supply chain to try to stock up on
(07:11):
minerals and on technologies that were important to them, and
they expected this. They also have an authoritarian system of government,
and so it's a one man rule, and President Hijinping
whatever he says goes. He prepared the Chinese people for
a long struggle with the United States. And you know,
China is like the United States. People are patriotic about
(07:35):
their country. I would say there's a highly nationalist element
in Chinese social media, and there are hundreds of millions
of Chinese involved in Chinese social media. So this was
a moment where the leadership said, we have to stand
strong and defend our country.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
And they think they've done that.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
After the break Nick Burns weighs in on the job,
facing his successor and the effects of the Trump administrations
cuts to the federal government. The US is going to
have a new ambassador in Beijing soon, David Perdue has
(08:14):
been confirmed.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I wonder if.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
You've spoken with him, exchanged messages with him, and what
counsel you would give him about the role itself and
the ways in which you've found you could be the
most successful.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Well.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
I have spoken with him, and I wish him the
best of success, because we have so much writing on
this policy with China that we've got to be successful.
I think he's very well placed to be ambassador. He
worked in business in Hong Kong and Singapore. He's been
to China. As a member of the Senate, he was
on Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, which are the
two relevant committees, two of them for China, and has
(08:49):
a clear sense of what he wants to do.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
It's a tough job.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I found out, it's not for the feint of heart.
We have with China the most competitive relationship of any
country in the world. China is our leading competitor for
military influence and military power in the Indo Pacific, our
leading competitor on the major technologies AI, biotech, quantum computing
that will form the basis of the future of the
(09:15):
global economy. Our third largest trade partner with which we
have a very problematic trade and teriff relationship. And obviously,
and maybe this is the most important part of it,
we believe in human freedom and human rights, and the
Chinese government does not practice that. There are major violators
of the human rights of their own people. But at
the same time, and this makes it so complicated, David,
(09:38):
is that China's our largest and strongest competitor, but there
are certain issues where China is one of our most
important partners. We're the two stewards of the global economy.
We're seeing that play out right now in the teriff issue.
On climate change. We're the two leading emitters of carbon
and so President Biden felt very important to work with China.
If we want to do anything about fen, we've got
(10:00):
to work with China to make that happen. So I
always thought it was it wasn't a fifty to fifty balance.
I actually thought I spent about eighty percent of my
time on the competitive edge with China, about twenty percent
on cooperative matters.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And that I thought was the right ratio.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
But that makes for a very complicated relationship where you've
got to both defend and push and resist on one hand,
and then you've got to stretch out your hand to
work with them and shake their hand on the other.
That's the reality of being the American ambassador to China.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Before I kind of pull back and ask you some
broader questions, I wonder how you felt about the relationship
between the US and China when you left.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Well, I arrived in China, was sworn in in twenty
twenty one, and arrived a couple months later hawkish about
the relationship on national security grounds, because China is this
very serious competitor impinging on a lot of American interests
in the end opisis And I think I left China
more hawkish.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I saw the reality of the relationship and the cynical
nature of the government of China, and of the duplicity
on some issues of the government of China, the fact
that we would make an agreement and then it wasn't honored.
So I think this is a long term structural rivalry.
We're competing for global power.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I don't think that will change.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
No, matter who's president, and so we've got to steal
ourselves for the next decade or two to a historic
competition with China, and China right now is stronger than
any adversary the United States has ever faced in the
history of the United States, going back to the Revolutionary War,
including the First and Second World Wars, including.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
The Cold War.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
The Soviet Union and its heyday was not as strong
as China is today. And so we've got to face
that competition. But here's the catch. We've got to do
it in such a way that we don't end up
in a war, because a war would be catastrophic. But
to be engaged with the Chinese leadership, to talk to them,
as Secretary Vescent did this past week on the terariff issue,
(12:10):
but on a thousand other fronts, be engaging them and
talking to them so you can compete. We can cooperate
where we can, but we avoid a conflict, which in
the future would be an absolute catastrophe. That makes for
a very difficult and complex job.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
There seems to be a message from this administration Washington
that there can be bombasted and heated rhetoric, radically increased tariffs,
but then you can flip the switchback and things can
go back to normal. And drawing on your experience as
a diplomat for many decades, do you think that that's
folly or that that's accurate.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
I think we're at a moment of great transformation in
the global power picture, with alliance is shifting very rapidly.
You see that China and Russia, in Iran and North
Korea and Venezuela and Nicaragua are kind of all working together,
the authoritarian dictatorships, and they're working together to try to
(13:04):
cut down the power of the United States, reduce it
in the world, and of our democratic allies. And I
always felt, working for President Biden, that one of our
strongest suits is that we have reinforced our alliances despite
the fact that we are still the strongest power in
the world. You do need friends and allies in the world,
and I do think that's the greatest mistake that President
(13:26):
Trump has made in his first four months in office.
If Donald Trump had faced China down, but had not
placed high tariffs on Japan, South Korea, the European Union, Canada,
and Mexico, all those countries would have been on our
side of the table. Have the same trade and tariff
(13:48):
problems with China that we do, but they weren't interested
in doing that once they were placed under the same
tariff regime that China was placed under. And so I
fear that the administration really has a blind spot. They
think the United States can go it alone in the world.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
We can't.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And so that's an own goal by the Trump administration.
It's one that they've got to reverse if they hope
to be effective.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Can you recognize the State Department today?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
You can spend forty five years in government service, given
the cuts that have taken place, the priorities of it,
How different is it from the place that you first
went to forty five years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
David, I answer it this way.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I spent a lifetime in government at the State Department
in White House, serving in Washington and overseas. Every government
agency can be subject and should be subject to reform.
But taking a sledgehammer to USAID and firing eight thousand
people in one week, without a thought, without a plan,
without actually knowing what you're tearing down, that was a
(14:47):
huge mistake. Treating nonpartisan civil servants, military officers, foreign service
officers as if they are disloyal because they work for
President Biden. Well, they also work for President Bush. They've
worked people like me work for both parties. We take
an oath to the Constitution to be nonpartisan, but the
(15:07):
Trump administration has not appointed a single foreign service professional
ambassador since it took office. They've appointed lots of political appointees,
but nobody from the ranks of our serving career diplomats.
Seventeen of our deputy chiefs of mission are number two
officials in embassies who were assigned to these jobs and
(15:27):
getting ready to go have been told they're not going.
And many of them, if not all, of that group,
are women and people of color. And so there is
a crisis in our civil service right now. And if
these cuts continue the way they are, and if the
denigration of our civil servants continue, you're losing a great
(15:48):
group of people who just want to serve the country
and want to do it in a non partisan way,
and they will be nonpartisan, that is the Foreign Service
and US government way. And I think the Trump administration
and has been extraordinarily destructive of this tradition we've had
in this country now for about one hundred and thirty
years of a professional civil service, not a political spoils
(16:09):
system what we had in the nineteenth century, but professional
civil service that would serve the country and serve any
president at the American people elected. That's what's at stake,
And I think when the pendulum does swing back at
some point, we're going to have to recreate USAID, recreate
the Voice of America, recreate Radio Free Asia. These are
(16:30):
journalists who we employ to tell the story of the
United States, in the case of China, to several hundred
million Chinese listeners of VOA and Radio Free Asia. So
enormous damage has been done by this very cynical effort.
Doge to tear down all these institutions and not replace
(16:52):
them with anything of value.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
But you're confident that that force of gravity will swing
the pendulum back that we will be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I don't recreate them.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
I don't think anybody can predict when reason will prevail
again and logic will prevail and sanity. But it has
to because I think future administrations, future presidents will look
around at their government and say, where are my AID workers?
How do we run vaccine programs, global health programs, literacy
programs that we ought to be doing around the world
(17:21):
Because if Americans are generous people.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Where are my diplomats?
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Why do I not have any diplomats with thirty or
forty years of experience? Well, they were all fired, summarily
kicked out in the first couple of weeks and months
of the Trump administration. It's a true national crisis.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I'd like to close by asking you what you're telling
students here who are here at the Kennedy School here
at Harvard to learn from your experience, to learn an
art of diplomacy that has been practiced and perfected for
many decades.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
What do you tell them? Hang on, hang on to
your ideals.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
It's a good thing to want to spend your life
survey the United States of America, your country.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
It's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
You want to be in the public square what Teddy
Roosevelt called the arena of public service. Study hard, and
don't leave that dream behind of public service. Because what
a tragedy would be for our country if young people
in this country felt, well, I can't serve in the
federal government because I'm not welcome as a career official
in the federal government. We need non partisan americans out
(18:26):
there representing us without any regard to party allegiance. That's
an enormous asset, and if we let it wither away,
and this administration is doing that, it's going to do
enormous damage to our country.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I'm David Goura.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
This episode is produced by our senior producer Naomi Shaven,
with help from Amber A.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Lee.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
It was edited by Patty Hirsh, Tracy Samuelson, Molly Smith,
John Low, and Ramsey Alraccabe. It was fact checked by
Rachel Lewis Chrisky and mixed and sound designed by Segura.
Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso, Our deputy executive producer
is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster. Board
Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. If you liked
(19:11):
this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big
Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find
the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The trade war between the US and China is on pause.
Officials from both countries have lowered tariffs temporarily, and they've
agreed to keep talking. Both countries hope they'll be able
to draft a new trade deal by early August. Wall
Street welcomed that news, but it is an ambitious timetable,
and I wanted to get a better sense of how
realistic it is that in ninety days the US and
(00:30):
China could resolve their differences and the trade war between
the world's two largest economies could end. So I called
up Nicholas Burns, who was the US ambassador to China
under President Biden. It's one of the toughest jobs in government.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
You've got to both defend and push and resist on
one hand, and then you've got to stretch out your
hand to work with them and shake their hand on
the other. But that makes for a very complicated relationship.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Burns's job in Beijing was the capstone of a decade's
long career diplomat. He's held senior jobs under Republican and
Democratic presidents. Now, Burns is a professor of diplomacy and
international relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, which is where
I sat down with him this week to talk about
what he says is the most important relationship that the
United States has. I'm David Gura, and this is the
(01:22):
big take from Bloomberg News Today. On the show, Nicholas Burns,
the former US Ambassador to China, on the trade war,
the challenges facing his successor, who was just confirmed by
the US Senate, and what he's telling his students at Harvard.
We're worried about the future of diplomacy. I want to
(01:45):
start with the meetings that took place over the weekend
in Geneva, and I'm curious how you look at the
way they unfolded and the outcome of them.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Do you see it as a positive step?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Well, first of all, I started from a first principle,
and that is that China's been the largest and most
important disruptor in the global trade system for about three decades.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Right now.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
There's a reason why the United States and many other
countries around the world have placed terraces on China. China's
manufactured exports, in particular, is because China has been dumping
them around the world below the cost of production and
it's been a killer for jobs both in the United
States historically in the last several decades, but also around
the world. So I have a degree of sympathy for
(02:29):
the situation that President Trump and his team inherited, which
was a situation that we left when I left in
mid January as ambassador to China. The Chinese are trying
to act now is that they're the innocent party, that
they're the victim of this trade war by President Trump,
and that they're the responsible party, when in fact the
reality is quite different.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Having said that, these are going.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
To be very very difficult negotiations over the next ninety days,
I think in the end, self interest and logic will
prevent both sides need an agreement. China's our third largest
trade partner. About a million American jobs depend on trade
with China. Manufacturing jobs in China depend on trade with
(03:12):
the United States. So neither country can afford to sunder
the economic ties and the millions of interactions that our
private sector has had with the Chinese economy over the
last forty years. And I think in the end there
will be a trade agreement, but getting there, I think
is going to be extraordinarily difficult.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
During your tenure, you were trying to, if I may,
rehabilitate a relationship that had worsened during the first Trump administration,
develop conduits for communication, re establish economic and security ties.
When you left that post, could you've envision this turning
out the way that it has in terms of how
the rhetoric has been ratcheted up, the tariffs have been
put in place. Is it the worst case that you
(03:51):
envisioned or worse yet?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Still, I certainly did not anticipate one hundred and forty
five percent American terrorists on China or one hundred and
twenty five percent on Chinese tariffs on American goods, and
the trade war that has resulted effectively led to a
trade embargo as of the past week, when no ships
were sailing with goods back and forth, when manufacturers couldn't
(04:13):
export to each other's countries, and you see the significant
shortage of goods that traditionally are important to both economies.
So I didn't expect that to happen at all. We're
the two largest global economies, so we have a profound
impact on the health of global economy. But we also
need the global economy to be functioning in a rational
and stable way, and I think you know, we're not
(04:35):
anywhere close to being out of the woods. If the
levels now are set at thirty percent tariffs on the
American side imposed on China and ten percent by China
imposed on the United States, those are historically high levels,
and a lot of trade will not be able to
take place. It just simply won't be economical.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
A minute ago, you spoke about how China is portraying
not just the talks, but the way that this trade
war is unfolded. How effective you think that is. Do
they walk away from this feeling like they have the
upper hand. Do you think the world views them as
having the upper hand in these negotiations.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Well, the Chinese press, the nationalist press, and to an extent,
the government of China have been saying that they held out,
that they stood strong, and that they faced up to
the American tariff threats and they did not blink. And
they've been trumpeting that line in the global South. President
she just hosted most of the major leaders from South
(05:29):
America at a major summit he's been making. He made
a trip in Southeast Asia to the Asian country. So
they clearly are signaling to the United States. You're not
going to bully us. We have other options. You've seen
a big increase in Chinese manufactured exports to their neighbors.
So yes, the government of China is trying to portray
itself as the steady, solid country that stood up to
(05:53):
the United States. I think that China needs a deal too.
There's a reason why the Chinese met with Secretary of Vessant.
The economy is slowing down. They're facing lower GDP growth
for the next five to ten years. They have a
property crisis that continues to linger. They have a consumption problem.
The Chinese people are not consuming in a rational way,
(06:15):
sitting on their money because of the uncertainty of the
investment environment in China itself. They have strength in the
Chinese economy, enormous strengths.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
But they also have these weaknesses.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
China could not afford a sustained trade war with the
United States. That's why they were at the table, and
that's why they've agreed to a deal in ninety days.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
What did you learn being there about that country's capacity
to whether something like this. So you're saying they couldn't
sustain it long term, but give us some insight into
how they had been preparing for a moment like this
one where there would be this kind of geopolitical test.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I was in China, of course, during the presidential election,
our presidential election of November twenty twenty four, and as
soon as President Trump was declared the winner in that
election and prepared to office, the Chinese began to prepare
for a trade war. They saw it coming. They had
listened to Canadate Trump. They've did a lot of remobilization
of their supply chain to try to stock up on
(07:11):
minerals and on technologies that were important to them, and
they expected this. They also have an authoritarian system of government,
and so it's a one man rule, and President Hijinping
whatever he says goes. He prepared the Chinese people for
a long struggle with the United States. And you know,
China is like the United States. People are patriotic about
(07:35):
their country. I would say there's a highly nationalist element
in Chinese social media, and there are hundreds of millions
of Chinese involved in Chinese social media. So this was
a moment where the leadership said, we have to stand
strong and defend our country.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
And they think they've done that.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
After the break Nick Burns weighs in on the job,
facing his successor and the effects of the Trump administrations
cuts to the federal government. The US is going to
have a new ambassador in Beijing soon, David Perdue has
(08:14):
been confirmed.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
I wonder if.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
You've spoken with him, exchanged messages with him, and what
counsel you would give him about the role itself and
the ways in which you've found you could be the
most successful.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Well.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
I have spoken with him, and I wish him the
best of success, because we have so much writing on
this policy with China that we've got to be successful.
I think he's very well placed to be ambassador. He
worked in business in Hong Kong and Singapore. He's been
to China. As a member of the Senate, he was
on Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, which are the
two relevant committees, two of them for China, and has
(08:49):
a clear sense of what he wants to do.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
It's a tough job.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I found out, it's not for the feint of heart.
We have with China the most competitive relationship of any
country in the world. China is our leading competitor for
military influence and military power in the Indo Pacific, our
leading competitor on the major technologies AI, biotech, quantum computing
that will form the basis of the future of the
(09:15):
global economy. Our third largest trade partner with which we
have a very problematic trade and teriff relationship. And obviously,
and maybe this is the most important part of it,
we believe in human freedom and human rights, and the
Chinese government does not practice that. There are major violators
of the human rights of their own people. But at
the same time, and this makes it so complicated, David,
(09:38):
is that China's our largest and strongest competitor, but there
are certain issues where China is one of our most
important partners. We're the two stewards of the global economy.
We're seeing that play out right now in the teriff issue.
On climate change. We're the two leading emitters of carbon
and so President Biden felt very important to work with China.
If we want to do anything about fen, we've got
(10:00):
to work with China to make that happen. So I
always thought it was it wasn't a fifty to fifty balance.
I actually thought I spent about eighty percent of my
time on the competitive edge with China, about twenty percent
on cooperative matters.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And that I thought was the right ratio.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
But that makes for a very complicated relationship where you've
got to both defend and push and resist on one hand,
and then you've got to stretch out your hand to
work with them and shake their hand on the other.
That's the reality of being the American ambassador to China.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Before I kind of pull back and ask you some
broader questions, I wonder how you felt about the relationship
between the US and China when you left.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Well, I arrived in China, was sworn in in twenty
twenty one, and arrived a couple months later hawkish about
the relationship on national security grounds, because China is this
very serious competitor impinging on a lot of American interests
in the end opisis And I think I left China
more hawkish.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I saw the reality of the relationship and the cynical
nature of the government of China, and of the duplicity
on some issues of the government of China, the fact
that we would make an agreement and then it wasn't honored.
So I think this is a long term structural rivalry.
We're competing for global power.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I don't think that will change.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
No, matter who's president, and so we've got to steal
ourselves for the next decade or two to a historic
competition with China, and China right now is stronger than
any adversary the United States has ever faced in the
history of the United States, going back to the Revolutionary War,
including the First and Second World Wars, including.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
The Cold War.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
The Soviet Union and its heyday was not as strong
as China is today. And so we've got to face
that competition. But here's the catch. We've got to do
it in such a way that we don't end up
in a war, because a war would be catastrophic. But
to be engaged with the Chinese leadership, to talk to them,
as Secretary Vescent did this past week on the terariff issue,
(12:10):
but on a thousand other fronts, be engaging them and
talking to them so you can compete. We can cooperate
where we can, but we avoid a conflict, which in
the future would be an absolute catastrophe. That makes for
a very difficult and complex job.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
There seems to be a message from this administration Washington
that there can be bombasted and heated rhetoric, radically increased tariffs,
but then you can flip the switchback and things can
go back to normal. And drawing on your experience as
a diplomat for many decades, do you think that that's
folly or that that's accurate.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
I think we're at a moment of great transformation in
the global power picture, with alliance is shifting very rapidly.
You see that China and Russia, in Iran and North
Korea and Venezuela and Nicaragua are kind of all working together,
the authoritarian dictatorships, and they're working together to try to
(13:04):
cut down the power of the United States, reduce it
in the world, and of our democratic allies. And I
always felt, working for President Biden, that one of our
strongest suits is that we have reinforced our alliances despite
the fact that we are still the strongest power in
the world. You do need friends and allies in the world,
and I do think that's the greatest mistake that President
(13:26):
Trump has made in his first four months in office.
If Donald Trump had faced China down, but had not
placed high tariffs on Japan, South Korea, the European Union, Canada,
and Mexico, all those countries would have been on our
side of the table. Have the same trade and tariff
(13:48):
problems with China that we do, but they weren't interested
in doing that once they were placed under the same
tariff regime that China was placed under. And so I
fear that the administration really has a blind spot. They
think the United States can go it alone in the world.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
We can't.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And so that's an own goal by the Trump administration.
It's one that they've got to reverse if they hope
to be effective.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Can you recognize the State Department today?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
You can spend forty five years in government service, given
the cuts that have taken place, the priorities of it,
How different is it from the place that you first
went to forty five years ago.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
David, I answer it this way.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I spent a lifetime in government at the State Department
in White House, serving in Washington and overseas. Every government
agency can be subject and should be subject to reform.
But taking a sledgehammer to USAID and firing eight thousand
people in one week, without a thought, without a plan,
without actually knowing what you're tearing down, that was a
(14:47):
huge mistake. Treating nonpartisan civil servants, military officers, foreign service
officers as if they are disloyal because they work for
President Biden. Well, they also work for President Bush. They've
worked people like me work for both parties. We take
an oath to the Constitution to be nonpartisan, but the
(15:07):
Trump administration has not appointed a single foreign service professional
ambassador since it took office. They've appointed lots of political appointees,
but nobody from the ranks of our serving career diplomats.
Seventeen of our deputy chiefs of mission are number two
officials in embassies who were assigned to these jobs and
(15:27):
getting ready to go have been told they're not going.
And many of them, if not all, of that group,
are women and people of color. And so there is
a crisis in our civil service right now. And if
these cuts continue the way they are, and if the
denigration of our civil servants continue, you're losing a great
(15:48):
group of people who just want to serve the country
and want to do it in a non partisan way,
and they will be nonpartisan, that is the Foreign Service
and US government way. And I think the Trump administration
and has been extraordinarily destructive of this tradition we've had
in this country now for about one hundred and thirty
years of a professional civil service, not a political spoils
(16:09):
system what we had in the nineteenth century, but professional
civil service that would serve the country and serve any
president at the American people elected. That's what's at stake,
And I think when the pendulum does swing back at
some point, we're going to have to recreate USAID, recreate
the Voice of America, recreate Radio Free Asia. These are
(16:30):
journalists who we employ to tell the story of the
United States, in the case of China, to several hundred
million Chinese listeners of VOA and Radio Free Asia. So
enormous damage has been done by this very cynical effort.
Doge to tear down all these institutions and not replace
(16:52):
them with anything of value.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
But you're confident that that force of gravity will swing
the pendulum back that we will be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
I don't recreate them.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
I don't think anybody can predict when reason will prevail
again and logic will prevail and sanity. But it has
to because I think future administrations, future presidents will look
around at their government and say, where are my AID workers?
How do we run vaccine programs, global health programs, literacy
programs that we ought to be doing around the world
(17:21):
Because if Americans are generous people.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Where are my diplomats?
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Why do I not have any diplomats with thirty or
forty years of experience? Well, they were all fired, summarily
kicked out in the first couple of weeks and months
of the Trump administration. It's a true national crisis.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I'd like to close by asking you what you're telling
students here who are here at the Kennedy School here
at Harvard to learn from your experience, to learn an
art of diplomacy that has been practiced and perfected for
many decades.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
What do you tell them? Hang on, hang on to
your ideals.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
It's a good thing to want to spend your life
survey the United States of America, your country.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
It's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
You want to be in the public square what Teddy
Roosevelt called the arena of public service. Study hard, and
don't leave that dream behind of public service. Because what
a tragedy would be for our country if young people
in this country felt, well, I can't serve in the
federal government because I'm not welcome as a career official
in the federal government. We need non partisan americans out
(18:26):
there representing us without any regard to party allegiance. That's
an enormous asset, and if we let it wither away,
and this administration is doing that, it's going to do
enormous damage to our country.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I'm David Goura.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
This episode is produced by our senior producer Naomi Shaven,
with help from Amber A.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Lee.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
It was edited by Patty Hirsh, Tracy Samuelson, Molly Smith,
John Low, and Ramsey Alraccabe. It was fact checked by
Rachel Lewis Chrisky and mixed and sound designed by Segura.
Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso, Our deputy executive producer
is Julia Weaver. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster. Board
Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. If you liked
(19:11):
this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big
Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps people find
the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday.
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