Ex-Trump adviser urges him to cut economic ties with China, restart nuclear tests

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, he should sever all economic ties with China, consider deploying the entire US Marine Corps to Asia and resume live nuclear-weapons testing, his former national security adviser writes in an article offering the most detailed account of what foreign policy may look like in a second Trump term.

The proposals are spelled out in an article set to appear in Foreign Affairs magazine written by Trump’s last national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, who may get another top job if Trump wins a new term as president in November.

While O’Brien was a hardliner and helped fuel the tougher stance toward China that emerged late in Trump’s time in office, the prescriptions he spells out go far beyond anything he publicly advocated at the time.

“As China seeks to undermine American economic and military strength, Washington should return the favour,” O’Brien writes in the article’s most explosive policy prescription, saying that “Washington should, in fact, seek to decouple its economy from China’s.”

There’s no guarantee Trump would adhere to the policy proposals on China that O’Brien lays out in the article, especially one that would have such a seismic impact for the US and the world given how interwoven the two countries’ economies have become.