Trump likely to pick Marco Rubio as America’s next Secretary of State: Report

Rubio, a Cuban-American born in Miami to a father who worked as a bartender and a mother who worked as a hotel maid, will be the first Latino to be the face of American diplomacy if Trump indeed picks him.

Rubio, the ranking member of the Senate intelligence committee and a senior member of the Senate foreign relations committee, is a strong critic of China; his pathbreaking legislations against Beijing have led China to sanction the Senator. In contrast, Rubio is a consistent supporter of the US strategic partnership with India. And just four months ago, in July, Rubio introduced a legislation that called the US to treat India as an ally when it came to tech transfers, expeditiously deliver defence equipment, build the partnership on the shared threat from China, and hold Pakistan responsible for any terror attack against India emanating from its soil.

The Trump rapprochement

Rubio had competed against Trump in the Republican presidential primaries for the 2016 election cycle. But after Trump’s win, in his first term, Rubio emerged as an important advisor to Trump, especially on the US approach towards Latin America. He has been a strong supporter of Trump’s re-election campaign and was among the top contenders for the vice presidential slot before Trump picked JD Vance.

Despite not getting the VP slot, Rubio continued to forcefully defend Trump, in media appearances, at the Republican convention, and on the campaign trail — all of which won him Trump’s approval, despite many in Trump’s ecosystem holding the 2016 primary battle against Rubio and viewing him in the mould of the older neoconservative Republican establishment that is more “globalist” in its thinking.

But Rubio’s hardline views on China, expertise on South America where he is staunchly critical of dictatorships and Left-wing regimes, personal identity at a time when Hispanic support for Trump has reached record levels, relationships on the Hill and credibility with the foreign policy community appear to have helped in getting him to be seriously considered for the position of Secretary of State — even though the final decision remains to be seen.

China ‘greatest threat’ of 21st century

In a speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC in March 2022 — HT attended the event — Rubio laid out his views on China. He said, “In Beijing, we are faced with an adversary that has a nuclear arsenal, but also control of critical supply chains, and an influence over global markets not even the old Soviet Union had.” He said that Beijing no longer hid its ambitions and didn’t believe in concepts such as “universal rights,” “global engagement,” and “international law”. “They believe in raw power. They believe because they are a big country, their smaller neighbours must be their tributaries. And they believe the only way for them to become more powerful is to make others weaker, particularly America,” Rubio argued.

The Senator said that this was the “raw, unvarnished truth” about the Chinese Communist Party and in what amounted to a stinging critique of the US’s own thinking and approach on the issue, Rubio said, “The biggest geopolitical blunder of the last quarter century was the naive, bipartisan, widely held belief that free trade and globalization alone could change all of this, and in particular could change them.” In this period, he added, China had stolen America’s “critical technology, manufacturing capacity, and jobs”, hollowed out American cities and broke its social cohesion. It had infiltrated “every segment of American society, from government and business to academia and entertainment”. And it had flooded American cities with fentanyl, Rubio said.

Rubio gave the Trump administration credit for breaking this bipartisan consensus by recognising China as an adversary but said that the new consensus still hadn’t gone far or deep enough. And he singularly blamed the American corporate class for acting as China’s lobbyists. “Beijing deputises American companies and turns them into their lobbyists and advocates in Washington. It was American companies that lobbied to stop my bill to block imports made with Uyghur slave labour in China. Not just any companies, iconic brands — Nike, Coca-Cola, and Apple. They were more interested in appeasing Xi Jinping to maximise their profit margins than doing what is both morally right and good for their country.”

Rubio said that the US could no longer allow its approach to China to be held back by “leftist radicalism or a lack of corporate patriotism” since Beijing had made its intent clear, including with its aggression against allies and partners such as India. “These trends won’t get better — they will only worsen and accelerate from this point forward.”

Rubio offered a set of recommendations on what the US can do to deal with the Chinese threat.

This included first unity and clarity within the US on the nature of the threat itself. “The gravest threat facing America today, the challenge that will define this century and every generation represented here, is not climate change, the pandemic, or the Left’s version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China. And we will need a whole-of-society — not just government — effort to match them.” Second, he argued for empowering the government to counter China’s “infiltration” into US.

Third, he batted for reviving American industrial capacity. “A nation dependent on hostile regimes is not going to last long. You can’t be a great power if you’re not an industrial power…Relying on a hostile adversary for these things and more will leave us vulnerable and weak.”

Fourth, Rubio said the US must strengthen allies and partners. “This is not just a competition between China and America. Beijing seeks dominion over its neighbours. It views them as vassal states, tributary states. That’s its vision for the future of the Indo-Pacific region. These aren’t buffer states — there are no buffer states — these countries just happen to be on the front lines. In the coming months and years, our alliances and partnerships with Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, and others will be more crucial than ever.”

Rubio has translated his suspicion of China’s political system, strategic intent and economic and military capabilities into legislations.

On human rights and democracy, Rubio proposed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act that “banned goods sourced from the Chinese Communist Party’s concentration camps in Xinjiang — where Uyghurs and other Muslims suffer forced labor, indoctrination, sterilization, and systematic rape — from entering America, according to a summary on the Senator’s website. He also pushed forth the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act empowering the US government to “punish Beijing for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedom”. This legislation is what triggered the Chinese sanction on Rubio.

On technology, Rubio was behind the Secure Equipment Act that prevents the US government from issuing new licenses to Huawei and ZTE; he also proposed a measure to ban any American taxpayer support for companies producing semiconductors in China.

In the Heritage speech, Rubio said that the history of the 21st century will be written in one of two ways, as either a story where a “rising authoritarian power replaced a free society as the world’s dominant power and ushered in a new dark age of exploitation, conquest, and totalitarianism” or as a story where “people of the United States — the freest, most prosperous, and successful nation in the history of the world — against considerable odds, rallied around the truths this country was founded on and ushered in a century of liberty, justice and prosperity”.

Championing the India partnership

His position on China has led Rubio to emerge as a strong supporter of India on Capitol Hill. In June 2023, welcoming PM Narendra Modi during his state visit to DC, Rubio said that it was crucial that the Joe Biden administration and US Congress prioritised this “incredibly important relationship”.

“Our nations’ economic and security interests overlap on many of the most pressing issues, especially the growing hostility of the Chinese Communist Party in the Himalayas and in the Indian Ocean. We find ourselves at a new juncture in global history in which both India and the United States can further strengthen this vital partnership and build upon the foundation of our shared democratic values and national interests,” Rubio wrote last year.

This year, in July, Rubio proposed a wide-ranging legislation titled “United States-India Defense Cooperation Act of 2024”, covering the threats India confronted from both China and Pakistan and laying out a mandate for the US administration to assist India to deal with those threats.

In a statement on the legislation, Rubio said, “Communist China continues to aggressively expand its domain in the Indo-Pacific region, all while it seeks to impede the sovereignty and autonomy of our regional partners. It’s crucial for the U.S. to continue its support in countering these malicious tactics. India, along with other nations in the region, is not alone.”

In its statement of policy, the legislation proposed that US policy be oriented to support India in “its response to growing threats to its internationally recognized land and maritime borders”, provide necessary security assistance to India “to deter actions by foreign actors” that violate these borders, and cooperate with India on “defense, civil space, technology, medicine and economic investments”.

It mandated the US Secretary of State to track and report all instances in which Pakistan has used “offensive force, including the use of proxies” against India, provided safe havens to terror groups, and the assistance Pakistan has provided to militants in “the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir”.

And it proposed giving India an exception to the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), a legislation that is meant to penalise countries that procure sensitive defence equipment from Russia.

It also proposed treating India as an ally when it comes to provisions of the Arms Export Control Act, thus lifting the export controls that currently apply to India and inhibit technology transfer beyond a threshold — Rubio’s thinking on these lines will bring great cheer to Delhi that has been keen on accessing tech, only to confront export control bottlenecks.

All of this means that Rubio’s likely elevation will be greeted with relief and cheer in most capitals in the Indo-Pacific, including New Delhi, except in one country, the country that suddenly has a lot to worry about its relationship with the US under Donald Trump.