The Senate confirmed the next U.S. ambassador to China Tuesday during an especially tense time between the two nations.
Former Republican Sen. David Perdue was confirmed in a 67-29 vote. Fifty-one Republicans, including Utah GOP Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis — voted in favor of the onetime Georgia senator, as did 15 Democrats and one independent.
President Donald Trump handpicked Perdue to navigate foreign policy with one of the biggest American adversaries and trading partners in December. That was months before Trump entered a trade war with China, slapping 145% tariffs on Chinese imports. Beijing reciprocated and levied a 125% tax on American products.
The Trump White House anticipates China will cave in the coming days. “I think that over time we will see that the Chinese tariffs are unsustainable for China,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Tuesday.
“They sell almost five times more goods to us than we sell to them. So the onus will be on them to take off these tariffs. They’re unsustainable for them,” he said.
The ‘anti-China’ hawk
Curtis sat down with Perdue a week into the Trump presidency to talk about ways to deter China and better support American priorities.
“The United States’ dependence on China in critical areas— like microchips and the minerals needed for our defense systems —gravely jeopardizes our economic and national security," he wrote in a social media post.
Perdue has been labeled an “anti-China” hawk by Chinese think tanks for his time in Congress, where he sounded the alarm about China’s rapidly developing military capabilities.
“They want a world more in line with their authoritarian principles,” he said during his confirmation hearing, indicating that “a new kind of war” is brewing.
David Perdue’s approach to China
He laid out his vision for U.S.-China relations during his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month.
“Our approach to China should be nuanced, nonpartisan and strategic,” he said. Perdue promised to dissuade “China’s penetration into our power grid, our ports and our personal lives” and prioritize eliminating fentanyl precursors, all through diplomacy so as not to compromise American national economic interests.
Before his time in Congress, Perdue served as the CEO of Dollar General, and had stints at Sara Lee and Reebok, giving him plenty of exposure to the inner workings of the global supply chain.
Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gave remarks in support of Perdue ahead of his confirmation vote Tuesday.
“Today, we’ve seen over the last recent decades China move from a third-world country to a near-peer to the United States,” he said. “This has brought China to the challenging competitor they are for the United States, yet they are very different from us.”
Beijing doesn’t follow the same rules of the free market, capitalism and human rights, Risch said before adding that Trump ought to be “tough on China.”
The work is cut out for Perdue, too, the Idaho senator said.
China will have done its research on the incoming ambassador. But as Dennis Wilder, a former director for China at the National Security Council under George W. Bush, told Politico that Beijing probably has bigger questions, like whether Perdue could facilitate a back channel communication between China and the White House.