Explaining Trump's Second-Term China Policy: Conservative Populism and Audience Reward Logic

Following Donald Trump's 2024 electoral victory and return to office, conservative populism has further consolidated itself as a major ideological force in the United States. At the same time, U.S. policy toward China has increasingly been driven by a logic of audience rewards. This article defines audience rewards as a strategic mechanism through which political leaders leverage foreign policy to appeal to domestic constituencies and thereby sustain their political viability. Applying this framework, this study argues that Trump's second-term China policy seeks to identify, reshape, and mobilize conservative-populist preferences across the political, economic, military, and societal domains. It does so through the adoption of highly visible and attributable China-related measures, the reinforcement of a politics of winning, and the continued reproduction of a China-threat narrative, all of which serve to strengthen policy legitimacy and generate political capital among conservative-populist constituencies. Amid deepening domestic political polarization, although Trump's China policy may not fully align with conservative-populist preferences in every respect, the logic of audience rewards is likely to remain central under conditions of intensifying domestic polarization, thereby adding further uncertainty to U.S.-China relations.