Read: Trump’s trade war with China is already changing the world

The sound and fury that now accompany the release of any new U.S. economic data signify something less than even the data themselves would suggest. Each release of gross-domestic-product data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis is probed for evidence of the trade conflict’s effects. Yet even the best methods of interrogation will yield at least some untruths: Within months, the BEA itself will almost certainly consider this initial “advanced” GDP data to be wrong. Each quarter’s initial GDP estimate is typically revised by the BEA twice within three months, and four times within five years.

Meanwhile, as last quarter’s growth rises and falls by percentage points, the future of democracy hangs in suspense. The advanced GDP numbers are ephemeral, but the broader consequences of the trade battle will prove more lasting.

China’s response to U.S. trade actions appears to reflect a cynicism about the efficacy of democracy. Beijing’s strategy appears calibrated to exploit the fact that the American people elect the head of their government, by attempting to influence how the American people will vote. In effect, it seems to be gambling on its ability to turn American democracy against itself.

At the center of China’s responses are the tit-for-tat tariffs intended to hurt American farmers, a constituency that tends to support President Donald Trump and to live in crucial swing states. These tariffs appear designed to deliver political pain in the U.S., not to produce any economic benefit for China. China’s other political meddling, as Vice President Mike Pence recently laid out, includes attempts at interference in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Recent targets of Chinese Communist Party influence campaigns also include state and local governments, Congress, academia, think tanks, and the business community.

Now, according to Trump, China may be simply sitting and waiting for the clock of America’s own democracy to tick until he faces reelection.

Read: The trade war is just the beginning

The strategy that China now seems to be displaying in the U.S. can be deployed to punish elected leaders around the world for any number of reasons. China could utilize a variation of this strategy in a confrontation over any issue a country with an elected leader might have with Beijing, from trade abuses to human-rights violations.

If the U.S. is ultimately perceived to have lost the trade conflict, the leaders of democracies around the world will take notice. They will learn that confronting Beijing risks provoking a campaign of democratic destabilization—one that was successful elsewhere. They will need to weigh that risk against the potential rewards. China could point to the U.S. trade conflict to remind democracy’s leaders of this peril. And if any such leaders defiantly forged ahead, Beijing could draw on a playbook sharpened from its U.S. experience.