Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column.

In the competition between China and the U.S., China is winning.

That isn’t a conclusion many would have drawn six months ago, but now it’s inescapable.

What’s different today is that since taking office, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has taken many steps that play directly into its adversary’s hands, weakening its own ability to outcompete. And we will soon be at the point where this trend is irreversible.

For decades, China followed Deng Xiaoping’s dictum to “hide your strength and bide your time.” Unfortunately, most Western countries, led by the U.S., ignored the latter part of this admonition — that Beijing was biding its time — and instead focused on China as a huge new market for Western goods, services and capital.

Everyone could get rich from China getting rich, or so it seemed — a sentiment that Deng and his successors were absolutely fine with. Their purpose, however, wasn’t to get rich just for the sake of it, but to gain the necessary power to compete and win against the world’s sole remaining superpower.

So, by the time Xi Jinping ascended to power in 2013, China no longer needed to bide its time, and it started to show its strength.

In the past decade, China increased its military spending by 800 percent — the biggest military build-up in peacetime history. It now deploys more naval vessels than the U.S.; it is modernizing its nuclear arsenal, aiming to reach close to parity with Russia and the U.S. by the end of the decade; and it flexes military muscle in places that have long been under the sole purview of the U.S.

However, while its military expansion and reach is impressive, China’s economic, scientific and technological advances are most worrisome.

Seventy percent of the world’s countries now trade more with China than with the U.S., with over half of them trading twice as much with China. In Trump’s own words, America may be a big department store, but the products you can buy in its stores — and in those across the world — are made in China.

Trade isn’t the only market Beijing’s cornered either. Following a clear and consistent strategy that was first outlined by Xi in 2015, today it leads the world in electric vehicles and batteries, robotics, quantum communications, renewable technologies and more. Indeed, according to one study, while 20 years ago the U.S. led China in 60 of the 64 frontier technologies key to defense, energy, computing, biotech and other sectors, China now leads in 57 of these technologies.

This determination to win is particularly obvious in one area that has featured prominently in the news recently: rare earth elements and magnets that are critical for defense, electronics and green-technology manufacturing.

As it stands, China holds almost 50 percent of the world’s rare earth reserves, controls 70 percent of rare earth mines and accounts for 90 percent of global rare earth refining capacity. It also controls over 90 percent of critical magnet production, and successfully used that near-monopoly to force the Trump administration into backing down from its escalating tariff war and chip export controls.

But even in the areas where the U.S. retains a lead — think AI and quantum computing — China is catching up. The release of DeepSeek, for example, shocked the AI community for its speed and sophistication, as it nearly equaled the vastly more expensive models developed by U.S. tech companies. And the next DeepSeek generation, I’m told by a top Microsoft AI official, may even exceed the most advanced models from OpenAI and other firms.

All of this indicates China’s not only catching up but, in many ways, surpassing the U.S.

America has many advantages in this race — which is how it has managed to stay ahead, even as Beijing embarked on its long-term strategy to overtake it. But in the past six months, the Trump administration has systematically begun to dismantle many of them.

Let’s take partnerships: The biggest advantage for the U.S. is that it has allies, while China has clients. Collectively, the U.S. and its allies can outcompete, outspend, out-innovate, out-trade, out-finance and out-attract others to its side. But Washington’s allies in North America, Europe and Asia increasingly — and rightfully — fear that the current “America First” policy is putting them last. They’ve been told to defend themselves, to pay 15 percent or more in tariffs and, in the case of Canada and Denmark, to cede territory. As a result, they’re turning toward each other and reducing their military, economic and political ties to Washington.

And that’s not all. The Trump administration is also pursuing funding policies around universities and immigration that directly undercut America’s ability to compete with China. For 80 years, federal research dollars funded scientific and technological breakthroughs like the internet, genetic sequencing, space exploration, vaccines, cancer cures and much more. The country’s modern research universities led the way in spurring these innovations, drawing talent from across the globe to benefit from and contribute to its ecosystem of innovation.

But Trump has now cut federal funding for basic research by a third, blocked research grants to top universities for purely ideological reasons and tightened immigration for international students and scholars. One poll suggests that 75 percent of scientists in the U.S. today are looking to leave the country and work elsewhere.

It’s hard to underestimate the damage these policies are doing to U.S. competitiveness. To give just one example, many of the country’s closest allies are now offering lucrative grants and research opportunities to entice the talent pool at the core of America’s success as a global innovation machine.

This isn’t just shooting yourself in the foot — it’s shooting yourself in the head. And unless Washington rectifies the situation swiftly, it will find not just Beijing but other parts of the world passing it by.