Erratic and transactional, the US leader’s approach exposes domestic governance flaws and the limits of Washington’s containment strategy
3-MIN READ3-MINWang WenWang Wen is a professor and executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. Published: 8:30pm, 24 Aug 2026There is no shortage of Western commentary on US President Donald Trump’s second term. What’s missing is an honest account of how 1.4 billion of us in China see it – or at least how China’s officials and scholars do, since that’s who I can speak for here. I’ve spent a decade watching that view change, from real alarm in 2017 to something closer to a shrug today.Four things now count as consensus among Chinese scholars. One, Trump is undermining America’s alliance system. His first term rattled Washington’s furniture. His second is dismantling the house. He has purged the civil service, stretched executive power, taxed friend and foe alike, and gutted America’s contribution to global public goods.He appears to be governing for the next election, not the next generation – and this is speeding up the arrival of a multipolar world.
Three, pressure has been a poor substitute for actual containment. The 2018 trade war spooked Chinese firms. By 2026, the mood has flipped. Turns out sanctions are quite good at building the thing they’re meant to prevent.
