Donald Trump is making China the bogeyman in an election year – sound familiar?

In 2016, Trump pinned US socio-economic woes on China and won the election. This year, he is pinning Covid-19 on China to distract Americans from his policy failures. Will ‘Getting tough on China’ get him re-elected?

Hans-Georg Moeller

Published: 1:00am, 9 May 2020

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Critics of US President Donald Trump point out how badly he has managed the Covid-19 crisis – but these critics misunderstand Trump’s approach to politics. For Trump, politics is about managing public perception, optimising approval ratings and, most importantly in 2020, winning the presidential election.

To win an election, Trump knows only too well, one does not primarily need to govern well, but to, first and foremost, get more votes than the opponent.

Crises come and go, and from an electoral perspective, the point is not to solve them, but to mine them as efficiently as possible to one’s advantage, or, more precisely, to use them to boost one’s political profile. And this, Trump has done rather well.

In drastic fashion, Covid-19 has exposed what is wrong with American society. Official infection numbers are by far the highest in the world, and the virus has inflicted an enormous death toll on the country, exceeding the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam war.

It has revealed the vulnerability of large segments of the population, especially minorities: the US is the most unequal developed nation, with about 40 million people living in poverty (more than half of these in extreme poverty) who have little or no health insurance and often no access to quality health care.

Extended areas, particularly in urban regions, are crime-ridden and lack social cohesion. Public health is in peril: more than 20 million people suffer from addiction, the opioid epidemic costs more lives every day (about 130) than car crashes, and more than 40 per cent of the population is obese.

Under such conditions, no politician could be expected to prevent the virus from causing havoc. Wisely, Trump chose a different strategy, one handed to him on a silver platter.

Covid-19 presented a splendid opportunity to recycle a core theme that worked very well for Trump in the 2016 election campaign: being tough on China.

The virus is a colossal threat to American well-being, and, as Trump used to proclaim, so is China – and Covid-19 originated there.

By conflating the virus with China, protection against Covid-19 can, politically, be seamlessly replaced by protection against that country. Trump can portray himself as the saviour of the American people, not by saving them from the virus as such – something no politician could do – but by saving them from its proxy, namely China.

Politics today often consists of creating and spreading effective memes – slogans, nicknames, metaphors, for instance – that profile oneself positively and one’s opponents negatively.

No one practices profile politics more shrewdly than Trump. Originally, Trump’s “tough on China” meme, as tried and tested in the 2016 election campaign, was meant in an economic sense.

It was about “getting even” on trade and jobs, or, more generally, about securing American economic supremacy by not allowing China to become richer than the US.

This economic meme allowed Trump to reach out to the crucial swing voters of the middle and lower classes who might otherwise have voted for the Democrats. Quite ingeniously, it combined economic anguish with patriotic pride and enabled Trump to cast himself as a man who cares about people, listens to them, and, importantly, gives them a voice.

What is more, it directed economic frustration away from home so the sacrosanct “greatness” of America did not have to be questioned, but could be affirmed. Impoverishment of Americans, it was suggested, had nothing to do with the shortcomings of domestic socio-economic structures – the major cause, instead, was external: “China”.

The “tough on China” meme struck a chord with American voters. It helped forge a bond between Trump and his base, uniting them against an external enemy.

A war, albeit only a trade war, could be waged, with the president as the shining commander-in-chief. Whether this war will ever benefit the American middle and lower classes economically is an open question. Politically, however, this does not matter. What matters is that it benefits Trump’s profile as a leader.

In this election year, Trump’s approach to Covid-19 mirrors his approach to the economic woes of his voters in 2016: shift the focus of the problem abroad and create a storyline that pitches them against us. Use the crisis to polarise and invite people to take sides; use it to curate a profile, an identity that they can emphatically embrace.

Dr Hans-Georg Moeller is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Macau

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