President's Changing Views on China
Leaves Texas Republicans in a Pinch

Capitol Inside
April 12, 2026

The deer you thought you saw in the headlights this weekend may have actually been Texas GOP leaders and lawmakers who were in states of jaw-dropping disbelief after learning on Friday that President Donald Trump wanted them to start being nice to China.

The America president managed to keep an ostensible about-face on China under wraps for several months before a Wall Street Journal report on Trump's quiet ditching of his original playbook on China in a favor of a policy that treats it more like a trusted ally than a hostile foreign adversary.

Since meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping in October, the national publication reported in an exclusive story that the Trump administration had paused tariffs on major industries in China, abandoned its intense scrutiny on investments from the massive Asian nation and cancelled plans to try to punish companies from China that were deemed as national security risks.

Administration officials and allies were instructed to halt the inflammatory rhetoric that's been a standard part of the GOP vernacular for most of the past decade with China deemed by the president as the number one threat to national security in the U.S. as far as foreign nations are concerned.

Trump gave China credit on Saturday for the latest truce in the war that the president is waging in Iran. Counties like Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey appeared to be more instrumental in the ceasefire that the U.S. wasn't able to negotiate without the outside help.

But then Trump wasn't as friendly in a Truth Social post on Saturday night in response to reports on the Chinese sending weapons to Iran. "If China does that," the president warned, "China is gonna have big problems."

The Republicans in Texas - as a consequence of the contradictory messages from their leader - have no way to really know at this point if China is a new friend or an adversary like they'd been taught to believe during Trump's reign, They will face a novel challenge if the administration's attempt to reframe a collective attitude about China isn't an aberration. The Republicans here might find it tough to view the Chinese as anything but a threat to their way of life after passing legislation last year that cracked down on Chinese investments here amid fears of communists infiltrating the Lone Star State.

The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature approved a landmark measure known as Senate Bill 17 as a prohibition on the purchase of property by the Chinese government or private firms with connections to it. Lawmakers passed a bill to ban state entities from investing into companies or public concerns that were affiliated with China while giving their blessings to a separate measure that would prohibit local governments in Texas from cutting deals with interests in nation's designated as national security threats.

The crackdown on investments from China sought initially to outlaw the sale of residential property to Chinese individuals and families as well before it was softened on the successful trip through the statehouse in Austin in 2025. State Senator Lois Kolkhorst - an influential Brenham Republican who chairs the Health and Human Services Committee - guided SB 17 through the upper chamber in regular session as the lead author. Kolkhorst passed the proposal out of the Legislature's upper chamber in 2023 on a 19-12 vote that included one Democrats voting with the majority party's members. But the restrictions on land sales to foreign adversaries died in a House committee that year without a hearing or vote.

GOP Speaker Dustin Burrows cleared the way for SB 17 after replacing Republican Dade Phelan as the lower chamber's top leader in early 2025. Trump's return to the White House made the measure's passage all the more predictable in light of the strategy that framed China as the most dangerous threat to national security in the U.S.

China piqued the Republicans' wrath during the early stages of the covid pandemic in 2020 amid reports on the virus' inception in a lab in Wujan. Some far-right activists accused China of inventing the coronavirus as a weapon to use against the United States - an early pandemic conspiracy theory for which there wasn't a shred of evidence to support.

The casting of the Chinese communists as bad guys intensified as Republicans softened attitudes about Russia in line with Trump's like they've done on every major issue in which the president had an interest. Abbott and his GOP allies in Austin find themselves in a quagmire now in the midst of a Trump turn of 180 degrees on the Chinese based on the position papers the WSJ revealed.

Texas lawmakers could attempt to adapt to the new view on China by repealing all the legislation that targeted Chinese investments - an outcome seems highly unlikely as a result of the embarrassment it would cause. GOP leaders and lawmakers could announce plans to make some refinements to the measures and leave it gutted or watered-down in the process. Or they could hold their ground despite the president's positions that could change without a moment's notice.

Toning down the rhetoric could provide the most imposing challenge - especially on the far right where verbal attacks have become personal in the case of State Rep. Gene Wu - a Houston Democrat whose family immigrated to Texas from China when he was a child.

Abbott tried to have Wu removed from office after he played a leading role in the Democrats' walkout that blocked votes in a special session on a new congressional map that Trump ordered the Republicans here to draw with five new districts for the GOP. Wu served as the chair of the House Democratic Caucus at the time. Abbott's bid to have Wu booted from the Legislature appeared to be a blatant publicity stunt before the governor's petition was rejected by the Texas Supreme Court as widely expected.

Former Tarrant County Republican Chairman Bo French - one of two Republicans in a primary runoff for a spot on the Texas Railroad Commission - has called Wu a "commie" without regard to the fact that his family had left their homeland to get away from communists.

Aaron Reitz - a former Trump administration official who ran for Texas attorney general without success this year - said before his elimination in the March primary election that he would "de-naturalize" Wu if elected as the state's top lawyer. But after finishing in 4th and last place in the GOP primary fight for Texas AG with 14 percent of the vote, Reitz never got the chance to strip the former Harris County prosecutor of his citizenship as an American like he'd vowed to do as a candidate.

more to come ...