To confront China, the president must rediscover the clarity and conviction of his first term — and leave behind the weakness and confusion that are defining his second.

I n his first term, President Donald Trump changed the national consensus on China. He was the first president in decades to call Beijing what it is: a relentless adversary bent on exploiting, coercing, and cheating its way to global dominance at America’s expense. He imposed targeted tariffs, sanctioned companies tied to the Chinese Communist Party, restricted Huawei, pressed allies to repatriate supply chains, and made standing up to China a litmus test for American resolve. His policies were so successful, in fact, that President Joe Biden retained many of them.

That was then. Today, President Trump is retreating from his own record and emboldening Beijing. Sure, the president has retained plenty of bark, rightfully observing the ways in which China, Russia, and North Korea are conspiring against the United States, but he’s lost his bite. China policy, once a defining strength of his first term, is fast becoming a glaring weakness of his second.

Trump once sounded the alarm about the CCP’s control of the wildly popular TikTok app, which vacuums up Americans’ data and funnels it back to Beijing. The eventual result was the landmark “Divest or Ban” law. Now, instead of enforcing the law as affirmed by the Supreme Court, the president is legitimizing TikTok by launching an official White House account — mocking the rule of law and installing CCP spyware on phones making their way in and out of the Oval Office.

Technology policy tells a similar story. In his first term, Trump recognized that America’s leadership in emerging tech was inseparable from our national security, requiring the careful use of export controls and other surgical trade tools to maintain our national advantage.

Now, rather than preventing the sale of advanced microchips to China, he’s happy to sell that same tech as long as the U.S. government gets a cut. In the case of Nvidia, the feds will take 15 percent of revenue derived from the sale of H20 chips in China. Anyone who’s been paying attention over the past 20 years knows what will happen next: China will acquire Nvidia’s tech through coercion or outright theft, and eventually cut the company out altogether. By blessing the deal, Trump isn’t defending American innovation; he’s auctioning it off to our most dangerous adversary for pennies on the dollar.

Even tariffs, a signature policy of both 45 and 47, have drifted into incoherence. Trump once promised that tariffs would force Beijing to the negotiating table. Instead, China’s exports rose 5.8 percent year over year this spring. Meanwhile, the administration continues slapping tariffs on our allies and key regional partners such as India, driving them closer to Beijing.

One of the most alarming reversals concerns Chinese students. In his first term, Trump warned of the risks posed by CCP-linked students in American universities — from intellectual property theft to espionage — and placed limits on student visas. Now he has opened the door to some 600,000 Chinese nationals enrolling in U.S. colleges. This not only squeezes out qualified American students but also invites the CCP to steal even more technology right here on American soil.

All of this reflects a troubling pattern: Instead of pressing China from a position of strength, Trump is accommodating it from a position of weakness. Xi Jinping believes history is bending in China’s favor — that America is decadent, divided, and unwilling to defend its interests. Every time Washington blinks, Beijing is emboldened and Taiwan blanches.

The United States cannot afford any more half measures or mixed signals. If President Trump truly intends to secure America’s future, he must rediscover the clarity and conviction of his first term — and leave behind the weakness and confusion that are defining his second.

Standing up to China is not optional. It is the central foreign-policy challenge of our time.

To his credit, Trump once saw this clearly. He understood that decades of bipartisan complacency had allowed China to enrich itself at America’s expense. He knew that defending American workers and securing our technological edge required tough choices and sustained resolve. That is the Trump who changed the national debate, and that is the Trump America urgently needs once again.

—Marc Short is the chairman of the board of Advancing American Freedom. He served as White House director of legislative affairs, and later as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, in the Trump–Pence administration. John Shelton is the policy director for Advancing American Freedom.