I am no expert on trade, but I have made investments in China for years and had just returned from a weeklong visit. Eventually summoning my nerve, I suggested that neither approach would work. China is just too formidable as a rival — as well as a critical manufacturing powerhouse — to be reined in by diplomacy or an aggressive shift in policy. The only real solution is to get our house in order and beat China at its own game.

The need to do so is only growing, because the commotion of Mr. Trump’s first year back in office has set America back. In addition to manufacturing, China is threatening America’s pre-eminence in a range of fast-growing sectors, including artificial intelligence and pharmaceutical drug development. While he has tried to cut our spending on important government functions like basic research, China has made them national priorities.

China’s progress in A.I. has been stunning. While it still lags the United States in terms of cutting-edge semiconductor chips, China has an abundance of another key ingredient of A.I. success: power. It has more than twice as much generating capacity as we do, and some of its data centers pay half as much as ours for power.

That has helped it develop products like Manus, with exceptional speed. An A.I. agent with performance rivaling ChatGPT’s, it was sold to Meta for more than $2 billion shortly after my visit.

Human capital is a key ingredient of China’s success. I met with innumerable young entrepreneurs whose energy and intelligence at least matched that of their Silicon Valley counterparts, including one billionaire who still sleeps in his office.