Without a trade strategy, Biden can’t win the contest with China China's president, Xi Jinping, gives an online speech at the Boao Forum for Asia on April 20, 2021. Photo via Kyodo and Reuters. The biggest hole in the Biden administration’s otherwise encouraging efforts to better compete with China—a void that could undermine all the other pieces—is the lack of an international trade strategy. While President Xi Jinping’s China accelerates his efforts to negotiate multilateral and bilateral trade and investment agreements around the world, both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have grown allergic to such arrangements.