China is much more powerful and in some ways more threatening. China wants to take us down a notch, to boast of being the linchpin of the world. It doesn’t require destroying America; and unlike the cold war, it is not an ideological triumph that China seeks. While Biden is right to see a contest between authoritarianism and democracy, it looks more like a popularity contest. Our goal is to present a better model. It shouldn’t be difficult – while a collectivist mentality makes most Chinese accept a repressive surveillance society, it’s not really appealing elsewhere.

In this competition, one thing we should do is dramatically increase our global vaccine support. Not only to earn brownie points, it would serve our interests by inhibiting new, more dangerous strains of the virus, as well as the damage COVID-19 has done to global prosperity, which is hurting us as well.

The real challenge for China is not ideological competition, but economic competition. But all nations compete against each other. Just like all businesses, globally and within a nation, are in competition. And because competition drives prices down to the cost of production, the lion’s share of the wealth created benefits not businesses but consumers. This is not just theoretical, which is why the average standard of living in the world has increased dramatically over the past decades and poverty (contrary to what many imagine) has plummeted.

Of course, this requires true, fair, unfettered competition, which is difficult to achieve because so many interests oppose it. But we have succeeded to a perhaps surprising degree. And this battle must be fought with China.

Trump’s tariffs, instead of promoting fair and open competition, hampered it, making it harder and more expensive for goods to come to market. This may have “protected” some American businesses and jobs from Chinese competition, but damaged the American economy as a whole – the costs borne by American consumers, who pay more for their purchases. Reducing their ability to buy other things, which would have boosted our economy and created jobs, making up for those lost to foreign competition. And while both sides suffer as a result of the tariff war, most economists believe America’s damage outweighs China’s.

Illustrated by his aggression against Huawei, Trump also sought to disassociate himself from China, dividing the world economy into two ghettos, ours and theirs. China is doing the same. Unroll globalized supply chains that integrate trade and maximize efficiency by enabling businesses to get the best and cheapest inputs. This economic vandalism can only hurt everyone.

Unfortunately, instead of presenting us as the champion of an open global economy, Biden is also trying to separate us from theirs. And he’s sticking to Trump’s tariffs. Biden understands Trump’s stupidity in choosing to fight with allies, rather than building a common front against China. But that’s undermined by a tight fixation on American jobs – signaling our friends that they’re actually alone. Yet apparently giving them a choice “with us or against usâ€. Although joining our decoupling from China is self-defeating.

Biden seems to view this as a battle that only one side can win. But we cannot “beat” China. Rather, we should aim for the win-win. That wouldn’t mean not fighting China over intellectual property, human rights, territorial aggression, etc. We can have these arguments while developing a mutually beneficial trade and without being really enemies. You argue with your partner but you still have sex.