WASHINGTON – In a rapidly changing global landscape, the Trump administration’s foreign policy received mixed reviews from lawmakers as policy experts outlined plans to ensure American national security at a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on Tuesday.
“Trump, if anything else, is a disruptor who recognizes that it’s time to go from the old to the new,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Affairs, a nonpartisan think tank, and professor of international affairs at Georgetown University.
The Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs met to discuss emerging global threats to American national security, specifically China. Republican lawmakers reiterated their support for President Donald Trump while Democrats on the committee voiced concerns about Trump’s approach with U.S. allies in Europe and Asia in the first month of his presidency.
“Does this administration know who our adversaries really are or who our allies really are?” asked Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.). “Russia is not our friend…China is not our friend…Europe is not our enemy…Mexico is not our enemy…Canada is not our enemy.”
According to the World Economic Forum, China has become sub-Saharan Africa’s largest bilateral trading partner. China is also now the European Union’s largest external import partner.
China’s goal by 2049 encompasses both its military and technological gains. According to a U.S. Department of Defense report to Congress last year, China’s strategy “determinedly pursues political, social, economic, technological, and military development to increase [their] national power and revise the international order to support [their] system of governance and national interests.”
“While the U.S. still leads China in more technologies than vice versa, the playing field is rapidly evolving,” said Michael Brown, Eric Chewning, and Pavneet Singh in a 2020 report published by the Brookings Institute. “China challenges U.S. technology leads in AI, genetic engineering, quantum computing and quantum sensors,” they continued.
“The world in 2025 could not be more different than the one President Trump inherited in 2017,” said Jacob Olidort, the director of the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank aimed at promoting President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.
Olidort is the former Director of Research at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy. He said that President Trump’s foreign policy strategy is the “exact right” one right now.
Brent Sadler, a retired U.S. Navy Captain and senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, said the U.S. cannot allow China to make gains with its allies.
“If we cannot secure our own supply chains and sustain a wartime economy, we are vulnerable to coercion by a China that effectively controls the terms of trade, be its network of ports and maritime dominance,” he said.
Meaghan Mobbs is a senior fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative non-profit that focuses on policy issues of concern to women. She is leading the forum’s launch of a center for American Safety and Security. “Our adversaries are exploiting the vacuum we created, and have now left behind,” she told the committee.
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said the Trump administration’s halting of U.S. foreign aid benefits China’s global influence and harms U.S. national security.
“We have strayed from the enduring purpose of U.S. foreign assistance to defend human rights and basic freedoms abroad in the interest of U.S. national security,” he said.
On the other side of the aisle, lawmakers gave more pause when it came to dispensing foreign aid as a part of a U.S. strategy to use “soft power,” a term Mobbs used to describe non-military partnerships and the spread of American culture and ideals abroad.
“I believe that the United States should be very cautious in extending itself too far,” said Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.).
Mobbs, who disagreed with the Biden administration’s use of “too much” soft power, said that the U.S. should use “smart power” – a combination of soft power and military power – to combat China and other global threats like Russia.
“Soft power is not charity, it is a weapon. One that revealed, can shape the battlefield before its first shot is fired,” Mobbs said. “Beijing understands this. Moscow understands this. The question is do we understand this?”
