Trump’s Soft Power Retreat Scrambles U.S.-China Race

“President Trump has set a radical new course in the U.S.-China rivalry, ceding ground to Beijing in pursuit of a far narrower vision of America’s role in the world,” Axios reports.

“Six months into office, the Trump administration has hollowed out the machinery of American soft power and retreated from key arenas where the U.S. has sought to blunt China’s rise.”

“Some of it is strategic: an ‘America First’ rejection of the institutions and norms Trump officials view as bloated, failed or captured by a liberal foreign policy establishment.”

“But some of it, critics warn, is shortsighted: focused more on scoring domestic political points than sustaining the long-term foundations of American exceptionalism.”