Later this month, President Donald Trump will meet with China’s Xi Jinping in Washington. Earlier this summer, Trump met with European leaders at a NATO summit in Turkey.
You can guess which one occupied more of the president’s attention.
China isn’t America’s only concern in 2026, of course. The Trump administration’s latest National Security Strategy addressed everything from the Western Hemisphere to Israel to, yes, America’s European allies. But more than any other global dynamic, the U.S. rivalry with China has come to define both Trump’s policies and the United States’s global outlook.
Are we discussing NATO or China?
This was painfully obvious at the NATO summit in Ankara. These summits earn world attention briefly, yet this one ended up feeling more like déjà vu. European countries lobbied Trump for more military equipment to Ukraine, again. Trump demanded that the U.S. acquire Greenland, again.
And China quickly sucked the oxygen out of the room. As the summit was starting, Beijing abruptly stepped up naval patrols around Taiwan with the clear purpose of exerting Chinese claims over nearby waters and intimidating Taipei.
At the same time, Chinese vessels had a tense stare-down with Japanese ships near disputed islands in the western Pacific, which Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyutai.
U.S. and allies confront increased Chinese bullying
None of this is new. It is classic Maoist bullying. Recently, however, China has become increasingly aggressive in its East Asian neighborhood, menacing not just Taiwan but encroaching on neighbors such as Vietnam and the Philippines. And while China’s territorial ambitions are long-standing, these latest provocations must be viewed in the context of its rivalry with the U.S.
The U.S. under Trump has taken a tough stance against China. But Trump has also made clear that America must coexist with China. During his summit with Xi in May, the two signed an understanding toward a “constructive relationship of strategic stability.”
China has, in certain respects, abided by this truce, with Xi even wishing America a happy 250th birthday. But Beijing has also taken it as a license to raise the pressure in its own backyard, significantly increasing naval patrols around Taiwan.
Meanwhile, Japan has been building up its military and increasing coordination with the U.S. under the leadership of its hawkish prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. Last year, Takaichi even stated that Japan could respond militarily if China invaded Taiwan.
These moves infuriated China, which responded with naval provocations along with economic ones. Japanese defense companies have been slapped with export controls, while new restrictions have been placed on Chinese rare earth shipments to Japan.
There’s an element of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” here. America offers an olive branch and China gets more aggressive; Japan throws down a gauntlet and China gets more aggressive. Either way, China gets more aggressive.
US-China rivalry dominates global affairs
But the upshot is that the U.S.-China rivalry remains of paramount importance. NATO, which is chiefly concerned with Russia, simply doesn’t have Washington’s full attention right now.
China is building up its military, but the main terms of its rivalry with the U.S. are economic. Here again, we see Europe on the back foot, caught between Beijing and Washington, trying to correct its enormous trade deficit with China while competing with a thriving U.S.
Economic competition is strategic competition
America is responding to Chinese competition, especially in the tech sector, by bolstering its native industry. This is true through the CHIPS Act on semiconductors, enormous investments in artificial intelligence, and other elements of U.S. economic policy.
Huawei is the elephant in the room here. Yet as many European nations turn to the Chinese giant for AI and 5G, the Trump administration just approved a merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks, creating a company with the scale to challenge Huawei on these key technologies.
It’s clear that competition with China is now affecting a good deal of U.S. government policy. It’s also clear that, in comparison, NATO and Russia pale in importance.
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Some of this can be traced back to Trump’s worldview, which respects power over ideological solidarity. So it was that Trump trashed European allies as “hopeless” during the NATO summit and pledged more money to Ukraine only so “you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough.”
NATO is far too wealthy, populous, and historic to vanish in the face of Trump’s indifference. But recent events show where the president’s real concerns are — and where the future of global security, economic power, and ideological competition truly lie.
Bart Marcois is a retired career diplomat. He was the principal deputy assistant secretary of energy for international affairs and has extensive private-sector experience in commercial intelligence and international business development. He produces daily political and diplomatic analysis at youtube.com/AMinuteWithBart.