Rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Dropping out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement might have been the Trump Administration’s biggest trade policy mistake.

The TPP was already negotiated and would have strengthened an alliance against China, including most of its biggest trading partners in East Asia and the Americas. America’s departure created tensions and infighting, distracting the U.S. and its allies from the goal at hand: countering China.

The other 11 TPP countries continue, without American input or influence, under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPATPP) to develop a modern institutional framework to contain Chinese commercial imperialism. countries are mostly China’s neighbors in Asia. Like the TPP, it seeks to create an alliance to push China toward the rule of law, but the Biden Administration so far has left trade entirely out of the agreement.

Instead, the IPEF negotiations are focusing entirely on non-trade issues like climate and labor policy—issues that give progressives opportunities to impose their policies on other countries and provide rent-seeking opportunities for labor unions and politically connected businesses in renewable energy and other favored industries.

IPEF has the potential to be a powerful diplomatic tool that helps to bring countries into America’s orbit and away from China’s. Beijing’s chauvinistic approach to foreign policy has alienated most of China’s neighbors and allies. They follow along because they lack alternatives. IPEF and the TPP could offer them a way out and make it easier for China’s smaller neighbors to stand up for themselves in a united front as they move toward American- style institutions that protect civil, political, and economic liberties.

IPEF could do all that, and so could the TPP, but America currently has no voice in the TPP, and IPEF risks becoming little more than another tool that progressives can use to force their policy wish list on countries that don’t want it. From the perspective of IPEF’s members, the Biden Administration’s approach is little different from Beijing’s. The next Administration can give China’s neighbors a better choice by refocusing IPEF on trade, dropping most of its non-trade issues, and turning it into a forum to promote democracy and strengthen alliances while pressuring Beijing to make needed reforms.

Play the long game. It took two generations to win the Cold War, and there were many reasons for that success. The fact that the planned economy is inherently inferior to free-market capitalism played a role. So did diplomatic, military, and economic pressure from free countries. But culture was just as important, and it did not come from any government. Blue jeans and rock ’n’ roll helped to win the Cold War as much as any deliberate policy did. So did images of fashion and prosperity in American movies and television shows like Dallas.

Such informal bottom-up processes will also play a vital role in helping to turn China from an authoritarian threat into a freer and less hostile power. It will take a long time, and the slow process will garner few headlines, but it can work. A conservative Administration will support efforts by ordinary Americans to engage with ordinary Chinese people through social networks,

Internet memes, fashion, movies, student exchange programs, tourism, and more. China’s leaders are set in their ways, especially with Xi Jinping presumably now in power for life, but the younger generation is more open than their parents were—more individualistic and open to change.

Effective outreach to the Chinese people will need the same humility that other sound trade policies require. Government-directed cultural and economic outreach risks being heavy-handed and could backfire. Everyone involved needs to know that the process is generational in scope and will not work overnight. At the very least, Washington should stay out of the way as much as possible when regular people want to contact each other across national, language, and cultural divides.

Each of these many components, from tariffs to trade agreements to culture, is a small part of a larger China policy. Many are not attention-grabbing and cannot be put into sound bites. Cultural engagement is not something Washington can plan. China’s own demographic and debt problems, along with aging leadership and growing discontent over the zero-COVID policy, might even cause an internal collapse. American policy must therefore be prepared to face any contingency.

Conclusion

A conservative trade policy needs a conservative vision. America’s founding institutions, based on free trade and entrepreneurship, have made America the world’s leading economy and will help keep America strong through the next century.

However, recent departures from those principles have hurt America’s economy and weakened alliances that are necessary to contain threats from Russia and China. Reaffirming those principles through policies of openness, dynamism, and free trade will boost America’s economy, make us more resilient against crises, and remove opportunities for progressives and rent-seekers to use the levers of government for their own purposes. Rediscovering conservative principles on trade policy and embracing America’s long history as the world’s leading commercial republic are an important part of restoring a government of, by, and for the people.