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China: Xi seeks to fill America’s void
Trump’s tariffs are pushing nations eastward as Xi Jinping focuses on strengthening ties with global leaders
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Trump has made it clear he’s a president with “little interest in the world beyond what it can offer him.”
(Image credit: Alexander Kazakov / Getty Images)
The Week US
16 September 2025
As “the U.S. isolates itself” economically and politically, said Katherine Kim in Politico, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is taking a “big victory lap.” Xi recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in China for the first time since 2018, then gathered with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and two dozen other foreign leaders in Beijing for a parade in which China showed off its massive military buildup. With President Trump’s tariffs and “America First” policies alienating India and other nations, China has started to “present itself as a trustworthy alternative” to lead a post-American world order. A furious Trump took Xi’s “performative” gathering of fellow autocrats as “a personal affront,” said Stephen Collinson in CNN.com, accusing him, Putin, and Kim of meeting to “conspire against the United States of America.” But Trump has only himself to blame. His punishing tariffs and cutoff of foreign aid are “accelerating a shift of global power to the East.”
Trump’s recent treatment of Modi and India “has been despicable,” said Bobby Ghosh in Time. For years, the U.S. had been courting India as a regional counterweight to China, but Trump hit the massive country with a 50% tariff, apparently out of spite. Trump falsely claimed he brokered peace in a brief flare-up of hostilities between India and Pakistan in May, and was infuriated when Modi declined to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Still, Modi has long viewed China as a dangerously aggressive neighbor, and he “can’t afford to cut ties with the U.S.,” which remains by far India’s largest trading partner. Despite the show of unity, there’s little chance of a “China–Russia-North Korea NATO-type military alliance,” said Tom Rogan in the Washington Examiner. Kremlin officials remain “deeply fearful” of Chinese domination, and these three autocratic countries have too many “mutually exclusive agendas” to form a solid bloc.
Asia’s foreign leaders do agree on one thing, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic—that the president of the United States is an incompetent “light-weight.” Western European allies also view Trump as a petulant, insecure child: Their leaders mostly toggle between “soothing his ego and working around him.” Trump has made it clear he’s a president with “little interest in the world beyond what it can offer him.” Don’t underestimate the enormous damage he’s doing “to American power and prestige.” China certainly isn’t.
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