Subject: Re: China turns a US trading partner screw
Oh? Did Trump give them Most Favored Nation status?
Hand them rocket technology?
Enable literally trillions of US dollars to flow their way for decades?
Turn a blind eye to blatant IP theft?
Turn a blind eye to blatant currency manipulation?

He didn't say that every action that strengthened China's position in the world was taken by Trump.

He said that every action taken by Trump has strengthened China's position in the world.

Let's face it - this latest climbdown by Trump is a really bad sign if a major goal of the tariffs was to try to isolate and contain China. He blinked really fast on all the other global tariffs, but with China Trump has been pretty clear that he was insisting that China make the first overture to start trade negotiations before there would be any forward progress.

China, having spent around a decade preparing for such a confrontation, did not do that. Trump, having spent barely a few weeks preparing the U.S. for this confrontation, couldn't hold his position.

Whatever the goals of this tariff policy may have been, the execution has been abysmal. Rather than isolating and weakening China, the early stages have only strengthened their position on the world stage relative to the U.S. They've shown they're the stronger player in the trade fight so far, demonstrated that they have significant levers over the U.S., used the chaos to strengthen their relationship with other trading partners, and seen the U.S. voluntarily drive a wedge between itself and almost all of the other major global players - and the regionally important countries in eastern Asia that we need to contain China.

Just a thoughtless and hasty ill-conceived plan, based on the naive assumption that everyone in the world needs the U.S. more than the U.S. needs everyone in the rest of the world. But now that push has come to shove, Trump can't handle the impacts that "decoupling" would have - so his threat to decouple having been revealed as a bluff, we're in far worse shape than ever.

Trump's deal-making style just doesn't fit with many the deals he needs to cut as President. It works okay when dealing with much weaker players who have no choice but to accept your terms, but it doesn't work with stronger players who have options other than taking the bad deal you're offering them. Rather than adapt his style, though, we're just back to bad Presidenting again.