Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

26. Trade · Minor · Contested — excluded from counts

Strengthen allied diplomatic pressure against Beijing's abuses

Partially done

801 26. Trade · from “The Case for Free Trade”

“Strengthen diplomatic pressure (in concert with allies) against Beijing’s abuses. Encourage cultural and intellectual engagement with the Chinese people, remembering that blue jeans and rock ’n’ roll helped to win the Cold War.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The allied-pressure half of the Quote has instruments; the engagement half moved the other way. On 2026-03-19 USTR announced the U.S.-Japan Action Plan on Critical Minerals, under which the two governments "will develop strategic trade policies and border mechanisms to mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities" in a sector China dominates, and on 2026-04-24 the parallel U.S.-European Union Action Plan for Critical Minerals Supply Chain Resilience, described as the primary U.S.-EU mechanism for coordinating on critical minerals with a view to a binding plurilateral agreement. The Agreements on Reciprocal Trade add a country-by-country layer: the U.S.-Argentina framework commits Argentina to "deeper economic security cooperation, including on combatting unfair trade practices of third countries, export controls, investment security". Against that, the Quote's second sentence — encourage cultural and intellectual engagement with the Chinese people — has no instrument and a contrary one: the administration announced on 2025-05-28 that it would aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students in critical fields (recorded at #2091).

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Contested Recommendation from “The Case for Free Trade”. Leveled partial on §3b’s two-object rule: allied pressure is delivered, cultural and intellectual engagement is not, and the visa restrictions at #2091 run against it.
  • The boundary here is real and is flagged for the consistency pass. The alternative reading is not started: the critical-minerals action plans are supply-chain instruments rather than diplomatic pressure “against Beijing’s abuses”, and the administration’s dominant mode in the window was unilateral tariff action, including against the same allies.
  • #2105, on the same printed page, carries the trade-and-human-rights strategy half of this subject; the two were leveled together and cite different instruments.
Action
expand
Object
Diplomatic pressure on Beijing
ID
2108