“They would like to make a deal”, Donald Trump said of China, at a joint press conference with Shinzo Abe on Monday. “We’re not ready to make a deal”.
Apparently it’s that simple. Or at least Trump wants to believe it is, because if it’s not, it means he’s misjudged the situation.
In the three weeks since Trump escalated the trade war, Beijing has circled the wagons. In the face of what China clearly believes is an irrational actor in Trump, the Chinese have seemingly resigned themselves to a protracted standoff. State media is buzzing with nationalist bombast and last week, during a speech in Jiangxi, Xi, without mentioning the trade war specifically, told his people to prepare for a new Long March – to be ready “start all over again.”
“Jiangxi is where China’s defeated Red Army started its fabled Long March in 1934, and Xi’s choice of destination is being viewed as an effort to invoke a spirit of endurance and to rally public spirit amid rising tensions with Washington”, SCMP wrote of Xi’s speech.
Read more: Make ‘Miscalculation’ Great Again
It’s true that China “would like to make a deal”, but Trump is overplaying the extent to which that desire is predicated on desperation. “I think they probably wish they made the deal that they had on the table before they tried to renegotiate it”, he said Monday.
As you can see, Trump was quick to remind China that the tariffs “could go up very substantially, very easily.” He went on to say that if you ask him, “I don’t believe that China can continue to pay these, really, hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs. I don’t believe they can do that.”
It’s almost as if Trump thinks China is susceptible to the same post-truth phenomenon that allows him to lie with impunity to the American public. He continues to mischaracterize tariffs as free money. It’s possible he believes it himself. But state media in China is going out of its way to remind the Chinese people that Trump isn’t telling the truth. “By saying the tariffs would benefit the country, the US is imagining a situation in which it is taking money from the pockets of China like a hot knife through butter”, the People’s Daily wrote earlier this month. “The US is taking the money out of the pockets of its consumers and claiming the money comes from heaven.”
Asked at a press briefing about Trump’s comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang bemoaned America’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act. “[The US] has various voices on China-US trade talks”, Lu said. “Sometimes it is said that an agreement will be reached soon, and sometimes that it is difficult to reach an agreement.”
By contrast, Lu insisted that Beijing has never wavered. “China’s position has always been the same”, he said. “We’ve always believed the differences between any two countries should of course be resolved through friendly consultations and negotiations.”
Of course.
watch Gordan Changs speech CDPC conference… another perspective.
This is all played out in the context an adversarial competition… The relationship between China /US can perhaps be best characterized as symbiotic….The term of the relationship is not considered in terms of perpetuity by either partner….Equities sense this as do the primary players in this drama…..Results are….. this is a war fought in the media to control ones own domestic power base in each case.. END
For sure Trump is acting like a child. You just know he through a fit when China came back to the table. And to continue parroting the “we’re taking money straight from China” is a joke, like almost everything else from this WH. I’m sure at some point someone told him how tariffs work and he exhibits wilful ignorance. Unconscionable really.
“I think they probably wish they made the deal that they had on the table before they tried to renegotiate it,” said the literally unreflective Babyman WH grifter; the American electorate who did not come out to vote on that infamously dark and catastrophic day in November 2016 unanimously cheered and agreed with him…