Democrats Accuse Trump of Ceding Global Influence to China

A report to be released Monday by Democrats serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee charges that the Trump administration has ceded diplomatic ground and global influence to China.

The report argues that Beijing is “filling the void we have left behind” by shuttering international aid operations and institutions like Voice of America, slashing funding for basic research and alienating key American allies.

The minority-issued report comprises the first comprehensive political and policy response by Democrats to the series of budget cuts, confrontations with top research universities and termination of programs that comprised the elements of American soft power that have defined President Trump’s first six months in office.

Perhaps the most interesting element of the report: Democrats chose the relationship with China — rather than Mr. Trump’s early refusal to back Ukraine, or the effects of tariffs — to frame its national security critique.

In an interview, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the committee, who initiated the report, said that was because “Democrats and Republicans alike agree on one thing: that one of the biggest threats to our future in the United States, both our economic and our national security future, is competition with China. And yet as I look at what the administration has done since it came into office, they have made decision after decision that undercut any coordinated strategic response to how we deal with China.”

So far Mr. Trump has not met with Xi Jinping, China’s president, and his few telephone interactions with him, officials say, have not gone beyond familiar talking points on the future of Taiwan, China’s nuclear buildup, and disputes over export controls of key technologies. Mr. Trump has focused almost entirely on the trade relationship, his aides say, and there are signs of division inside the administration over shifting the focus of American forces out of Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.