U.S. President Donald Trump’s swipes at the United Nations and international cooperation since retaking office have critics declaring that the U.S. risks ceding influence to China. Trump’s decision to quit the World Health Organization “just makes it much easier for China to assert itself,” former U.K. ambassador to the U.N. and intelligence chief John Sawers told CNN. After the Trump administration froze U.S. foreign aid funding, InterAction, an umbrella group for aid organizations, warned that it was creating “dangerous vacuums that China and our adversaries will quickly fill.”

Warnings such as these are designed to play on the suspicion of China that pervades much of the U.S. political establishment. Advocates for international aid and the U.N. know that it is hard to sell multilateralism on its own merits in Washington these days. But there is a bipartisan consensus that Beijing is gaining too much power in international institutions. At the Senate confirmation hearing for Elise Stefanik—Trump’s U.N. ambassador-nominee—senators were far keener to talk about the China challenge than the details of U.N. activities.

Yet while the Trump administration’s stance toward the U.N. does create openings for China to boost its influence in New York and Geneva, it also creates headaches for Beijing. Despite disowning parts of the multilateral system, the U.S. is still likely to use the U.N. as a platform to criticize China in public. And it is not clear that China actually wants to invest the political and financial resources necessary to take a leadership role in those U.N. agencies the U.S. rejects.

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The first Trump administration had a rocky relationship with China in the U.N. system. In 2017, then-Ambassador Nikki Haley successfully negotiated new sanctions on North Korea with her Chinese counterparts. But relations subsequently soured, especially after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as U.S. officials used forums like the Security Council to accuse Beijing of responsibility for the disease’s spread.

It is true that China took advantage of the first Trump administration’s general disdain for multilateralism to expand its influence in a number of international institutions. European diplomats faulted the U.S. for failing to halt a well-coordinated campaign by Beijing to fill the top job at the Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO. The U.S. boycott of the Paris climate change agreement allowed Beijing to present itself as the real leader in the fight against global warming.

But Trump also created problems for China at the United Nations. Following the FAO campaign, the U.S. appointed a new envoy to rally opposition to future Chinese efforts to get top multilateral positions, a policy maintained by the administration of Trump’s successor, former President Joe Biden. Chinese diplomats in New York said they found the unpredictability and sometimes open hostility of the U.S. hard to navigate.

There is no guarantee that Beijing will step up as a leader in parts of the U.N. system that the U.S. rejects.

The Biden administration’s engagement with China at the U.N. was also often tense. The U.S. toned down its rhetoric toward Beijing from 2021 onward. Biden’s advisers were relieved that China did not throw its weight behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the Security Council. The two powers managed to find some common ground on topics including promoting international cooperation around the use of artificial intelligence, or AI. But their differences were never far below the surface. In late 2024, Beijing blocked U.S. efforts to initiate a U.N. peacekeeping operation in Haiti, a country that, perhaps not coincidentally, still has diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Diplomats from other members of the Security Council say exchanges between their U.S. and Chinese counterparts have grown notably chillier.

Some officials worry that U.S.-China frictions will spike as the new administration settles in. Stefanik is set to take up her post in New York in February, when China will be holding the rotating presidency of the Security Council. It is possible that she will take the opportunity to challenge China over its behavior in the international system, or that the Chinese will aim to highlight how the Trump administration is weakening multilateralism. Both sides may also choose to remain civil in their first encounters. Stefanik’s criticisms of China during her confirmation hearing were pointed but measured. But the level of suspicion between the two powers will remain high.

In the meantime, there is no guarantee that Beijing will step up as a leader in parts of the U.N. system that the U.S. rejects. As its economy has grown, China has paid an increasingly large share of the world organization’s core costs. It now covers 20 percent of the U.N.’s regular budget, while the U.S. is on the hook for 22 percent, and the gap is liable to shrink further. As its financial obligations have risen, however, Beijing has also grown more cost-conscious and aimed to keep spending down. China is also still not a major donor to many of the big U.N. humanitarian agencies that the U.S. and other Western states largely pay for. In 2024, the U.S. gave the World Food Programme nearly $4.5 billion. China donated a little over $11 million, slightly less than Burundi. In a period in which China is facing economic headwinds, it may not want to splash cash around U.N. institutions.

This does not mean that Trump’s actions create no openings for Chinese influence around the U.N. system. Chinese spokespeople have been quick to express concern over Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris pact and WHO, while promising to remain committed to both. In the short term, the U.S. has indeed given Beijing an opportunity to score political points. In the longer term, Chinese officials may find themselves having to deal with escalating U.S. criticism at the U.N., while having to tamp down other countries’ expectations that Beijing will bail out the multilateral system. The result could be the worst of both worlds for the U.N., with the world’s two main powers locked in disputes but failing to give the organization the support its needs.

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