Podcast Transcript — How the US-China Race Shifted from Tariffs to Chokepoints
The Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States (AFPC-USA) hosted a Foreign Press Podcast episode in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation titled “How the US-China Race Shifted from Tariffs to Chokepoints.”
In a recent research paper for the National Bureau of Asian Research, with support from the Hinrich Foundation, titled “A New Era of U.S.-China Interaction: From Competing to Racing,” Evan Medeiros, the Director of Asian Studies and the Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, argues the 2025 US-China trade war represented far more than a routine tariff dispute, instead marking a significant structural turning point in the relationship. The conflict evolved from a series of retaliatory tariffs into a broader supply-chain war that exposed each country's vulnerabilities and intensified competition over critical sectors such as rare earth minerals, semiconductors, and advanced technology. Medeiros characterizes this new phase as a "race for leverage" between Washington and Beijing.
Medeiros spoke about his findings with journalist Roseanne Gerin, an assistant editor at the newsletter Trade Strategies Today, who has worked in journalism for more than 25 years.
This podcast episode was produced in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation. AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this episode. The learning takeaways can be found HERE.
Roseanne Gerin: Welcome to the Foreign Press Podcast, an educational program from the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA, produced in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation, an independent Asia-based philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing mutually beneficial and sustainable global trade. AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this episode. I'm Roseanne Gerin, an assistant editor at the newsletter Trade Strategies Today.
We're joined by Evan Medeiros, Director of Asian Studies and the Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He's also the author of a recent white paper published by the National Bureau of Asian Research with support from the Hinrich Foundation, titled “A New Era of U.S.-China Interaction: From Competing to Racing.” In this paper, Evan argues that the 2025 US-China trade war was not simply another tariff dispute but marked a structural turning point. What began as tit-for-tat tariffs evolved into a supply chain war, revealing asymmetric vulnerabilities on both sides and ushering in what he calls a race for leverage across critical minerals, semiconductors, and global technology.
Evan, welcome to the program.
Evan Medeiros: Thanks, Roseanne. Great to be here.
Roseanne Gerin: Your paper opens with a clear argument that 2025 wasn't just another flare-up; it fundamentally altered the trajectory of US-China competition. What convinced you that the 2025 trade war marked a true turning point rather than just another episode in a long series of disputes?
Evan Medeiros: Well, that's where the research paper began. I began with a question, not with a conclusion. In other words, it was clear that the US and China were locked in this long-term strategic competition — that's well accepted in expert circles — but it seemed to me that the experience of the trade war in 2025 was something different, in large part because both sides deployed these chokepoint sources of leverage as a way to get the other to back off.
And so, I began with the question: Was the trade war experience of 2025 just a garden-variety trade war, or was there something else going on? And so, when I started researching this paper, or this journal article, what I found was, as I recreated the record, the back-and-forth of what happened during the trade war, it became increasingly clear to me that this was more than just a series of tit-for-tat trade actions, but rather there was something more fundamental going on in this broader enterprise of the US and China setting the terms and negotiating the boundaries of this incipient strategic competition. So, I began with that question, and it was only through an investigation of the trade war that I realized that something more profound had occurred.
Evan Medeiros
Roseanne Gerin: You describe the post-Cold War period as one of mutual shaping, where both sides tried to influence the other's behavior. What were the key features of that era that no longer apply today?
Evan Medeiros: Well, that was an era in which both sides were using two-handed policies. In other words, engage and compete simultaneously, but fundamentally, China was in more of a defensive crouch. In other words, the Chinese were much more focused on countering what they believed was containment, countering American actions that they thought were trying to restrict their strategic space, constrain their economy, or destabilize their political system.
And so, for much of the 1990s and the 2000s, what you saw was both sides engaging and competing with each other simultaneously. But what changed was, beginning around the 2010s, especially after the [2007–2009] global financial crisis, the Chinese economy really took off in significant ways. You began to see Chinese influence and power growing. And then, of course, you had the emergence of [Chinese President] Xi Jinping in late 2012. And so, what you began to see is a China that was much more comfortable effectively throwing its weight around, being more aggressive and more assertive, using its economic power, [and] using its military capabilities as a way to advance its objectives. So, I think that basically the story of this evolution from mutual shaping to a more competitive strategy is a story of a China becoming much more capable, and then you had the emergence of a leader in China that was much more comfortable using Chinese strengths, including in competitive, coercive, and predatory ways to advance Chinese objectives.
Roseanne Gerin: You write that by the late 2010s, the relationship had shifted from complementary to competitive, especially in economics and technology. What were the most important structural forces driving that shift?
Evan Medeiros: One of the most important structural changes was the fact that the bilateral economic relationship, which had been complementary for much of the '90s and the 2000s, turned to being a much more competitive one. And that was simply a function of the fact that the Chinese were starting to move up the value chain. They were starting to produce more higher-value goods that directly competed with American manufacturers, but also, in particular, in the mid-2000s, once China had met most of its WTO [World Trade Organization] obligations, what you had was the emergence of industrial policy in China, combined with the growing strengths of state-owned enterprises and a government that had a very determined policy in which they wanted China to dominate certain industries globally. And so, that created a very, very unlevel playing field for not just American companies, but companies all over the world who found it increasingly difficult to compete in the Chinese market.
And combined with that was a Chinese policy of effectively saying, if a foreign company wants to invest in China, they can only invest under certain conditions. In other words, the Chinese started to leverage market access. What we in the West typically consider to be a public good regulated by the market, now the government's saying, “OK, if you want to invest here, you have to transfer certain types of advanced technologies that will help us, China, move up the value chain.” And then, of course, this all culminates in 2015, when the Chinese produced a document called “Made in China 2025,” in which they outlined very specifically a set of key industries that China wants to dominate, and the government is going to subsidize and support them to do so.
Roseanne Gerin: Your report breaks the 2025 trade war into four phases, from “upping the ante” to “setting a new floor.” It's one of the most thorough accounts of that year available. Looking across the four phases of the 2025 trade war, what new patterns in US and Chinese behavior emerged, and how did those dynamics transform a tariff dispute into a full-blown supply-chain war?
Evan Medeiros: It's a difficult question to answer because the Trump administration initiated the trade war and was using approaches that prior administrations had not really used as a way to shape Chinese behavior. And so, the Trump administration set out from the beginning. The president was very much focused on shrinking the US-China trade deficit. Other members of his administration were focused on bringing about structural changes in the Chinese economy, in particular, reducing the scope of industrial policies, subsidies, etc., and trying to use tariffs to bring manufacturing back to the United States. So, the Trump agenda is a complicated agenda to assess because it's a break from past administrations, which were much more focused on trying to bring about structural changes in the Chinese economy, and Trump himself was focused on the deficit, and others in his administration were focused on also a structural shift, but different because they wanted to change the behavior of American companies and basically try to push them to bring manufacturing back to the United States.
And so, this whole story of the trade war begins with this set of mixed motives, which is questionable whether or not those are the right motives. And then, the second question is whether or not tariffs are the right tool to do that. Can you use tariffs as a way to incentivize American companies to actually reshore manufacturing? You basically have to really increase tariffs in a very, very significant way because, of course, what many American companies have done in recent years is, as they've moved out of China, they've moved to other developing countries for manufacturing. Vietnam and Mexico are two prime examples. So, the whole trade war begins with that atypical fact pattern in US policy, and then, of course, the Chinese retaliate, and it's important to remember that the US trade actions were not just taken against China. The Trump administration, through Liberation Day, initiated effectively a trade war with the rest of the world. And so, that had an influence on US-China dynamics, but unlike many other countries, the Chinese didn't back down in the face of increasing tariffs. They reciprocated. And so, you had this very rapid tit-for-tat escalation in early April of 2025. So, that's a new, interesting pattern. The fact that the Chinese didn't back down, whereas a lot of other countries were focused on not provoking Trump and not getting basically drawn into an escalatory trade war. So, that pattern of an escalatory trade war is interesting.
And then, what you had was it got so extreme. You had 150% tariffs adopted by both sides by mid-April 2025. And then, what happened is I think the Chinese, in order to push the Trump administration even further, they pulled out a new tool, which was this weaponization of rare-earth controls. They adopted controls on the export of rare earths and magnets, first against American defense companies and then a bit more broadly. And that's what we would call a chokepoint control. In other words, China holds a monopolistic position on both the mining and refining and processing of rare earths and the production of specialized magnets. And so, the administration responded with its own chokepoint control. That's the major new aspect — the fact that both sides had weaponized these single-point vulnerabilities as a way to impose real costs to get the other side to back down. And then that pattern continues through the summer of 2025, and it's only when Trump and Xi meet in late October of 2025 that they basically declare a ceasefire, and then ultimately a truce.
Roseanne Gerin: As you mentioned, China's weaponization of rare-earth export controls fundamentally changed the bilateral dynamic. What did Beijing learn from that episode, and what did Washington learn?
Evan Medeiros: Well, it's important to understand that both sides weaponized chokepoint control. So yes, the Chinese identified a very, very significant vulnerability that was very disruptive to American industrial supply chains, especially these rare earths, but in particular, the magnets were critical for making engines for EVs [electric vehicles]. And as I note in the article, there was even a Ford factory that had to shut down for a few weeks because they lacked the inputs necessary to keep engine production going.
But the US had its own chokepoint controls, and that is that the Chinese rely on American companies for access to software that is critical in the design and manufacture of advanced semiconductors. The Chinese rely on the US for access to jet engines for commercial aircraft, which the Chinese are building. So, the US had its own chokepoint controls, but I think what the Chinese learned was that they had this tool that could hold at risk US manufacturing in a very, very significant way and that the US really had no response. The US had no alternative. It's not like we could just buy rare earths at a higher price in some other part of the global market. And so, for them, I think what they recognize is that they had a source of leverage that they had not had before and that the possession of that new source of leverage could be very, very significant with the Trump administration because it was so comfortable brandishing threats and using threats like tariffs as a way to put pressure on the Chinese, and the Chinese believe that they found a solution to that.
Roseanne Gerin: A major theme in your paper is that the US-China relationship has entered what you call a race — not just for advantage, but for insulation from the other side's leverage. You argue that the US-China relationship is defined by asymmetric vulnerabilities: The US has broad vulnerabilities but narrow leverage, while China has narrow vulnerabilities but broad leverage. How does that asymmetry contribute to the fragile stability you describe, and what makes this equilibrium so precarious?
Evan Medeiros: Well, let's first take the racing concept. So, I put forward the racing concept because I wanted to advance the conversation about strategic competition. When people ask, “How do you describe the US-China relationship?” It's easy and cheesy to say, “Ah, it's a strategic competition.” But of course, that doesn't really tell you very much. And what I found through my research on the trade war was actually there was a very specific dynamic that emerged from that trade war, which was China had certain leverage, America had vulnerabilities, China had vulnerabilities, America had certain leverage. And so, in many ways, the core essence of the competition, at least now it will likely change as the US-China competition evolves over time, but you have a point where the US is focused on reducing its vulnerability to China's leverage on rare earths, and the Chinese are focused on reducing their vulnerability to America's leverage, in particular, in the semiconductor or advanced semiconductor supply chain.
And so, in many ways, it's a race to see who can reduce their vulnerability first and who can expand their leverage accordingly. I think right now the Chinese view is that they will be able to reduce their vulnerability before the United States. I'm pretty skeptical of that, but their view is it's going to take the United States at least five years to substantially reduce its vulnerability to China's control on rare earths. Administration officials have talked about 18 months. That seems particularly ambitious, so the reality may be somewhere in between. And again, the US doesn't need to reduce its vulnerability to China's rare-earth controls to zero; all it needs to do is cut it in half so the Chinese have less leverage than before. Whereas the Chinese vulnerability to the US is its ability to produce advanced semiconductors at a time when those advanced chips are central to the development of an artificial intelligence industry.
And because now is such a critical time in the development of AI, possessing those advanced chips, right now seems particularly important. And the Chinese seem confident that they can catch up, if not surpass Nvidia, before the US can reduce its vulnerability on rare earths. And to me, that is the core strategic dynamic, but it's also a huge open question. And so, I think that the challenge right now for the United States is, yes, it has a vulnerability in its exposure to rare earths, but it has other vulnerabilities because the Chinese have done such a good job at developing monopolistic positions because of the heavy concentration of manufacturing in China.
So, another industry where the US is heavily exposed to China is biopharmaceuticals, both inputs for basic things like acetaminophen or amoxicillin, but also the growing reliance of American pharma companies on advanced pharmaceutical development in China. Many Chinese labs really are at the forefront of developing advanced drugs, including gene therapies. And so, those are just two examples where you have such a heavy concentration in China that, if the Chinese chose to weaponize those, it can be incredibly problematic for the United States. So, we're at a point where I think the Chinese have several different sectors where, if they chose to weaponize, it could be hugely problematic for the United States, whereas for the United States, the ways in which it can impose costs on China tend to be pretty narrow and pretty specific. In some cases, it's like single commodities like jet engines for commercial aircraft. In other cases, it's a bit broader, like the software and the tooling and the machines for producing advanced semiconductors. So, when I talked about the of leverage-vulnerability matrix between the US and China, I want to be clear: that was meant to be a snapshot of the current moment, not a forecast of the long-range predicament for the United States.
Now it's important to make a broader conceptual point in this context, which is what the trade war really reveals about international relations is we're at a moment where a nation's position within global networks, whether it's global networks on technology, global networks on finance, global networks on manufacturing, or global networks of critical minerals, a country's, what I call in the paper, “positional power” is quite an important determinant of the balance of power between two countries. And I put that forward because, traditionally, when we talk about the balance of power between two countries, we look at what are their typical capabilities — population, geography, defense budget, etc. And so, through my investigation of the trade war, what became very clear was not just this point about this race between both sides as the defining dynamic today in the strategic competition, but also at a broader conceptual level, because we're in an era of international relations in which major power competition is coming after a period of intense globalization, countries all over the world are trying to figure out, “OK, how do I compete with a country that I'm deeply economically, technologically, [and] ecologically interdependent with?” And so, what we're finding is that countries are figuring out how do they weaponize these interdependencies? And so, that's why I put forward this whole idea of positional power being an important determinant of the broader balance of power between countries.
Roseanne Gerin: As you look at the race for time both nations are currently in, what do the US and China stand to lose if they can't move past this era of weaponized interdependence?
Evan Medeiros: The era of weaponized interdependence is with us for the long haul. I think it's a structural feature of international relations today. I think because we're in the early phases of it, countries are still assessing the risks and the costs like, “Where can I weaponize in a way that gets the outcome I want but doesn't really cost me too much?” And so, there's a lot of, let's call it, experimentation, going on. And I think that's why the trade war was so important to me because it was the first major experiment by both sides in using these chokepoint controls. But I think over time, if the US and China are not able to sort out a way in which they can manage the competing pressures of economic interdependence and security competition, what you're going to see is a lot of economic disruption, a lot of inefficiencies, [and] a lot [of] higher costs. If American companies have to build and/or rely on supply chains totally separate from China for key inputs, for consumer electronics, for pharmaceuticals, it just makes the global market much, much more inefficient. So, it just means much more disruption, perhaps some shortages during periods of intense competition, and higher costs.
Roseanne Gerin: Your paper makes clear that this competition won't stay confined to economics and technology. It'll spill into diplomacy, security, and global governance. How do you expect the supply-chain-centered competition to reshape global alliances and institutions over the next few years?
Evan Medeiros: Yeah, that's a very good question. I want to be very modest about that because I made that claim in the end of the article, basically saying that you can't compartmentalize economic competition from the other arenas of competition. We compete on military security issues, obviously, on diplomatic issues, and they're all interconnected. And so, the ability to compartmentalize one from the other, I think is very, very, very limited. And I think it's one of the ways in which the US-China competition will differ a bit from the US-Soviet Cold War, in which there was a little bit more compartmentalization.
The other point that I think is critical is both sides are still assessing the long-term strategic intentions of the other. And if we get to a point where the strategic competition or this race for leverage and reducing vulnerabilities becomes particularly heated, it's hard for it to not spill over into these other areas because if you have a particular set of perceptions of American intentions in China and Chinese intentions in the United States, that could lock in place set visions of the other that will shape the future trajectory of this competition and make it much more difficult, for example, to find areas where we can work together because the broader enterprise that we're all involved in is determining what are the terms of coexistence for the US-China relationship? How do we compete and coexist simultaneously? And the history of international relations would suggest that this is going to be more of an implicit rather than an explicit process, right? It's not going to be like Potsdam or Yalta, where you get a bunch of leaders who sit down together and say, "OK, what are the terms of coexistence? Let's write it down." But rather through our interactions, usually dangerous interactions that caution us to risks, we generally come to an understanding about where the boundaries of the relationship are, but that the boundary exploration process could be a very dangerous and disruptive one.
Roseanne Gerin: You note that China enters this new phase better prepared, with a more resilient domestic economy and new economic tools. What does that mean for US policymakers trying to reduce exposure and rebuild leverage?
Evan Medeiros: Yeah, it means that the job for American policymakers is going to be a lot harder. So, going back to this whole issue of asymmetric leverage where China has limited vulnerabilities and substantial leverage, a big part of that snapshot on my part is the fact that the Chinese leadership has identified building resilience and self-sufficiency as a top economic priority. They are re-engineering their growth model in order to reduce their vulnerability and exposure to global sources of supply and demand. The United States is not doing that. And so, what I worry about is this resilience self-engineering project is going to create a situation where, over time, the Chinese are simply less vulnerable to chokepoint controls or just general use of economic tools to put pressure on China, and the US vulnerability will go up. I think about agricultural exports as a really good example. The Chinese, as part of this dedicated effort to build self-reliance, are very focused on reducing exposure to food, energy, and technology that could be cut off in the future. And it's one of the reasons why Chinese purchases of American agriculture have declined so substantially over the last five years. And so, what the Chinese do is they turn on and off their purchases of wheat, soybeans, sorghum, corn, etc., as a way to generate leverage or impose some costs. And we just simply don't have that level of flexibility in our economy to do that toward China. So, I worry about the Chinese because, let me put it this way: the Chinese economy in the reform era was built for speed in the sense of fast growth, and then eventually more balanced growth. Now under Xi Jinping, it's being built for combat. In other words, it's being re-engineered based on the presumption of long-term strategic and ideological competition with the West. And so, they want to reduce their vulnerabilities and increase their leverage, and they're adapting their broader macroeconomic model to do so.
Roseanne Gerin: Our audience is foreign correspondents covering US policy, global trade, and geopolitics. Your analysis has direct implications for how they frame and interpret this relationship. What aspects of the US-China competition are most often misunderstood or oversimplified in media coverage?
Evan Medeiros: The media has a real challenge covering the US-China relationship because it is such a complicated relationship. It's hard to convey that complexity in 800 words. So, I think there are a few areas where reporting would be improved with some nuance.
Number one is the Chinese economy. It's often characterized as this 800-pound gorilla with incredible momentum. Whereas the Chinese economy is changing in important ways — some ways that, as I said, provide it with leverage — but in other ways, the Chinese economy is weakening. You have depressed consumption, deflation, growing unemployment, [and] shrinking corporate earnings. In many ways, you have two Chinese economies emerging simultaneously — a very advanced high-tech economy focused on manufacturing value-added goods and a weak domestic economy. So, bringing forward the fact that China has a variety of domestic economic challenges at home. And that's without even talking about the big structural shifts like the fact that it's rapidly aging and that creates a huge fiscal burden for the government and is already shrinking the workforce. So, trying to bring forward the fact that there are weaknesses and limitations on the Chinese side.
Number two, when it comes to the Chinese military, the fact that, yes, it has a very large, very modern military that's growing, that's very worrisome, and the American military needs to take this very seriously. But on the other hand, this Chinese military has not gone to war since 1979. The American military has effectively been at war for the past 25 years. And so, bringing forward the complexity of China's situation and the challenges that the Chinese face. Similarly on the Taiwan question, right? The reality is that going to war over Taiwan could be a real disaster for China. Even if they launch an invasion and succeed in invading Taiwan, they would then have to occupy a place of 24 million people, which means that China would get locked in the largest counterinsurgency campaign in the history of counterinsurgency. And a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, just saying it would be disruptive to the global economy, is a vast understatement.
So, China might derail the economic revitalization and the quote, “national rejuvenation,” and achieving the “China dream.” So, this idea that somehow the Chinese are just champing at the bit to invade Taiwan is, I think, a bit simplistic. On the US side, there are a whole variety of challenges that the US has. So, articulating a clear China strategy is something that I think the Trump administration still needs to do. It's not entirely clear to me what their actual China strategy is. Number two is the fact that President Trump right now is pursuing a détente with the Chinese at a time when the sources of competition are only growing, and he seems a bit out of step with where many members of his political party are and where much of the rest of the United States is. We see a growing, gathering, accelerating, intensifying competition with China, and yet he's pursuing a détente, and it's not entirely clear where he wants to go with this particular détente and what he's going to accomplish. At the end of the Trump administration, it seems as if China will be even farther ahead in the military competition and the economic competition, and where is the US going to be? So, bringing forward some of the contradictions at the heart of the Trump administration's policy. But going back to the Taiwan question, it's often framed as the Chinese are going to invade tomorrow, and it's the US role to stop them. And I think it's important to highlight the agency of Taiwan. Taiwan, its leaders, its people have an important role to play in all of this. And so, making sure that Taiwan has a voice in these conversations. So, I would say that trying to inject a degree of nuance into some of the reporting, I think, would help enormously in presenting a more fulsome picture of the complexity of where we are in the US-China relationship today.
Roseanne Gerin: Finally, what advice would you give foreign correspondents trying to explain these complex supply-chain and technology dynamics to audiences who may not follow trade policy in depth?
Evan Medeiros: Yeah, that's a very important question. So, I think on these trade policy questions, I'll contradict my prior answer because, of course, they're incredibly complicated because supply chains are themselves inherently complicated. They involve multiple technologies. This involves multiple countries, [and] every country has its own rules. I think on the trade stuff, I would encourage reporters to try and simplify it. In other words, try to pull forward the essence of the dynamic that's occurring between the US and China, as opposed to try[ing] to explain all the complexity involved because usually, when it comes to US-China competition, there is a core dynamic at play. And so, trying to understand the true essence of a particular issue, I think, and trying to present that to readers is important. So, try not to complexify but to focus on the core essence of an issue.
Roseanne Gerin: Evan Medeiros, thank you for sharing your insights into this new era of US-China interaction and for helping us understand how the 2025 trade war reshaped the competitive landscape. And to our audience, thank you for listening. I'm Roseanne Gerin, and this has been the Foreign Press Podcast, brought to you by the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the USA, in partnership with the Hinrich Foundation. AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this episode.
