China, Israel, and the Meaning of Foundational Economic and Institutional Trust

American foreign policy often presents itself as a defense of universal rules. Washington speaks of fair trade, national sovereignty, responsible conduct, democratic values, and a rules-based international order.

Yet those standards are not applied universally.

Countries aligned with American power are routinely granted flexibility, military support, diplomatic protection, and the benefit of the doubt. Countries capable of challenging American power are treated far differently—even when their rise was enabled by American trade, investment, technology, and institutional cooperation.

China and Israel illustrate the two extremes of this foreign-policy double standard.

China was trusted with a significant portion of America’s manufacturing base. American corporations relied on Chinese factories to produce electronics, machinery, telecommunications equipment, consumer goods, industrial components, and countless products essential to everyday life. But when China used the revenue, infrastructure, skills, and productive capacity generated by that relationship to strengthen itself, Washington increasingly treated Chinese development as a threat.

Israel occupies the opposite position. It receives extensive military assistance, political support, intelligence cooperation, and diplomatic protection from the United States. Even when Israeli policy creates regional instability, contradicts stated American objectives, or increases the likelihood of deeper U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts, the relationship is usually described as an unbreakable alliance.

China is condemned for becoming stronger through economic development.

Israel is protected even when its military conduct creates strategic costs.

The difference is not simply democracy versus authoritarianism, peace versus aggression, or rules versus lawlessness. It is the difference between a country whose power is viewed as subordinate to Washington and a country whose growing power can compete with it.

Outsourcing Requires Foundational Trust

It is misleading to claim that the United States never trusted China.

A government does not have to consider another country a friend or military ally before placing foundational trust in it. Trust can be economic, institutional, logistical, and operational.

When a corporation moves production abroad, it must trust that the host country possesses functioning ports, roads, electrical systems, factories, banks, telecommunications networks, engineers, managers, trained workers, and government institutions capable of sustaining large-scale commerce.

It must trust that products can be manufactured at predictable quality, transported on schedule, cleared through customs, loaded onto ships, and delivered across the world.

When those products include computers, smartphones, telecommunications equipment, pharmaceuticals, industrial machinery, batteries, and electronic components, the relationship goes far beyond purchasing inexpensive clothing or toys. It becomes a form of structural dependence.

The United States also played an active role in China’s integration into the international trading system. Washington negotiated market-access terms with Beijing and supported the process that culminated in China joining the World Trade Organization in December 2001. At the time, the Office of the United States Trade Representative emphasized that Chinese accession would create greater openness, predictability, transparency, and access for American businesses.

That was an institutional expression of trust.

American policymakers and corporations believed China could be integrated into a global economic system that delivered inexpensive goods, access to Chinese labor and markets, and substantial profits for multinational businesses.

What they failed—or refused—to accept was the predictable result.

Manufacturing is not merely the act of assembling someone else’s products. It builds industrial knowledge. It creates networks of suppliers. It trains engineers, technicians, managers, and skilled workers. It generates tax revenue and foreign-exchange reserves. It encourages investment in ports, roads, railroads, energy, research, universities, and advanced technology.

A country entrusted with producing much of the world’s merchandise will not remain economically static.

China was never going to manufacture the modern world indefinitely without learning how to design, finance, improve, and eventually compete within it.

The Unspoken Expectation

The implicit American expectation appears to have been that China could become prosperous, but not powerful; productive, but not independent; technologically capable, but not technologically competitive.

China could manufacture American products, but it was not supposed to challenge American companies.

China could accumulate revenue, but it was not supposed to use that revenue to develop world-class infrastructure.

China could participate in international institutions, but it was not supposed to acquire enough influence to shape those institutions.

China could grow, but only within a hierarchy in which the United States remained unquestionably dominant.

This does not mean every American criticism of Chinese policy is illegitimate. Intellectual-property violations, unequal market access, industrial subsidies, labor conditions, surveillance, and state influence over commerce are all valid subjects for scrutiny. The United States has pursued formal trade disputes against particular Chinese practices, and U.S. officials now describe China’s state-directed economic system as a fundamental challenge to the WTO framework.

The double standard appears when the criticism expands beyond specific conduct and treats Chinese advancement itself as an offense.

The issue is no longer merely what China did wrong. The underlying complaint becomes that China used the economic relationship too effectively.

America Once Occupied China’s Position

America’s reaction is especially hypocritical because the United States followed its own version of the same developmental path.

The British North American colonies originally existed within an imperial economic system designed substantially around British interests. The colonies provided agricultural commodities and raw materials while Britain maintained greater control over manufacturing, shipping, and finished trade.

Enslaved labor was essential to this colonial economy. Tobacco, rice, and indigo were among the major commodities produced in British America through systems of racial slavery.

The cotton timeline requires some precision. Cotton was not yet the dominant colonial export that it would later become. The massive expansion of American cotton production occurred primarily after independence, particularly following the spread of the cotton gin and the seizure and settlement of additional southern and western lands.

That post-independence cotton boom was inseparable from slavery. The Library of Congress describes the history of American cotton as deeply intertwined with the plantation system, while its historical materials show how the cotton gin helped reinvigorate and expand enslaved labor in the South.

Enslaved people produced the cotton that became one of America’s most important exports. That cotton fed textile mills, supported merchants and financial institutions, strengthened shipping networks, and connected American expansion to British and European industrial markets.

America therefore did not begin its economic life as an advanced industrial power operating through some pure version of free-market competition. It began as a group of colonies exporting commodities within an empire, with much of that production dependent upon stolen land and uncompensated human labor.

After achieving political independence, American leaders concluded that political sovereignty without economic capacity was incomplete.

Building the American Economy

The new United States did not simply accept permanent dependence on British manufacturing.

Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures argued that the federal government should encourage domestic industry. Hamilton defended tariffs, government support, and policies intended to give developing American manufacturers an opportunity to compete with established foreign industries.

National Archives materials summarize Hamilton’s program as including protective tariffs, industrial subsidies, and support for internal improvements. His broader economic agenda also included federal assumption of debts, a national bank, and a tariff system intended to strengthen the country’s financial and productive foundations.

This was industrial policy.

America did not tell itself that using government power to develop manufacturing was an unfair distortion of the natural economic order. It regarded such policies as necessary for national independence.

During the nineteenth century, American industrial activity expanded rapidly. Congress was already sufficiently concerned with the growth of manufacturing to order an official accounting of industrial activity in the 1810 census. After the Civil War, the United States developed into an industrial giant, expanding its railroad, steel, petroleum, electrical, and manufacturing sectors.

America used its resources, trade, state institutions, territorial expansion, infrastructure, tariffs, financial policies, labor systems, and technological development to transform itself from a collection of former colonies into an economic power.

That is what rising countries do.

Why, then, is China expected to behave differently?

Why would China accept the responsibility of manufacturing for the world without using the resulting expertise and revenue to improve its own country?

Why would any nation voluntarily preserve its own technological dependence so that another country could remain dominant?

America did not do that after separating from Britain. It cannot reasonably demand that China do it now.

Israel: Trust at the Other Extreme

Israel demonstrates the opposite side of American foreign policy.

Where China receives foundational economic trust followed by suspicion, Israel receives extraordinary strategic and military trust accompanied by institutional protection.

In 2016, the United States and Israel signed a ten-year memorandum providing for $38 billion in American security assistance covering fiscal years 2019 through 2028. The State Department describes the relationship as one supported by robust defense cooperation and a lasting American commitment to Israeli security.

A 2025 Government Accountability Office report described Israel as historically the largest recipient of U.S. security assistance and stated that the United States provides it with approximately $3 billion in defense articles and other security assistance annually.

This is not ordinary cooperation.

It represents a high level of trust in another government’s military institutions, intelligence priorities, threat assessments, and strategic objectives.

Yet that trust is rarely subjected to the same political suspicion applied to China’s economic development.

When Chinese investment increases China’s international influence, it is described as expansionism.

When American military support increases Israel’s regional power, it is described as security cooperation.

When China develops infrastructure, expands manufacturing, or seeks control over important supply chains, Washington warns that China may be attempting to reshape the international order.

When Israel pursues military operations that carry regional consequences, the United States frequently supplies weapons, replenishes defenses, provides diplomatic backing, and treats Israeli security preferences as deeply connected to American interests.

This does not require denying Israel’s security concerns or ignoring attacks against Israeli civilians. It requires asking why the conduct of an ally is interpreted through a presumption of legitimacy while the development of a competitor is interpreted through a presumption of danger.

Conditional Standards

China and Israel reveal that American trust is not primarily based on consistent conduct.

It is conditional upon strategic position.

China was trusted when it served as a manufacturing platform within an American-led system. That trust weakened as China became capable of acting independently within that system.

Israel is trusted because its military and political power is viewed as operating within—or at least alongside—the American strategic order.

One country is treated as dangerous because it may become too independent.

The other is granted extraordinary latitude because it is considered an ally.

This is why the language of foreign policy can be deceptive. Terms such as “rules-based order,” “national security,” “unfair competition,” “defense,” and “shared values” often conceal the more basic issue of who is permitted to accumulate power.

The operative standard is not always:

Are countries following the same rules?

It is often:

Does this country’s power reinforce or challenge the existing hierarchy?

The Real Lesson of Foundational Trust

The United States had every right to reconsider the risks of excessive dependence on overseas manufacturing. A nation should not allow essential medicines, electronics, energy technology, military inputs, and industrial components to become dangerously concentrated abroad.

But correcting that error requires honesty.

American corporations moved production overseas because it increased profits and reduced costs. American consumers benefited from inexpensive goods. American policymakers built trade relationships and institutional agreements that made those supply chains possible.

China did not secretly acquire an industrial economy while America looked away. The United States helped create the conditions under which China became the center of global manufacturing.

Washington cannot reasonably hand another country the machinery of industrial development and then declare that country hostile for learning how to operate it.

Nor can the United States credibly claim to apply universal standards while giving favored allies military and diplomatic privileges that would be treated as dangerous in the hands of a rival.

A more consistent foreign policy would rebuild American manufacturing without demanding Chinese underdevelopment. It would evaluate trade disputes according to specific evidence rather than treating all Chinese advancement as aggression. It would subject military assistance to allies—including Israel—to meaningful conditions, oversight, and the same concern for international stability that Washington invokes against its competitors.

America’s objection is not simply that other countries exercise power.

The deeper objection is that some countries exercise power without American permission.

That is not a universal international order.

It is a hierarchy—and the foreign-policy double standard exists to preserve it.

Royal Politics examines power beyond the performance.