Trump’s Message To War-Weary Markets: ‘Sorry, It’s The Way I Negotiate’

It’s been a truly bewildering 24 hours for anyone attempting to get a read on where exactly the Sino-US trade spat is likely to go next.

On Sunday, in response to a question from a reporter at a breakfast with Boris Johnson, Donald Trump suggested he had “second thoughts” about hiking tariffs on China Friday afternoon. White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham and, subsequently, Larry Kudlow and Steve Mnuchin, claimed the president didn’t hear the question. In fact, they said, Trump wished he had raised the tariffs even higher.

Fast forward to Monday and, on the heels of a rather harrowing start to the week for markets, Trump conjured up a phone call he says took place between Chinese negotiators and US officials. Despite denials from China, that was enough to rescue US stocks.

Read more: Trump Says ‘China Called Last Night’. China Says ‘Hasn’t Heard Of Such A Thing’

Naturally, Trump was asked about China and, specifically, about the phone call during a post-G-7 press conference with Emmanuel Macron.

Suffice to say Trump did not admit to having fabricated the call, although he did waffle and obfuscate enough for two lifetimes.

“[We’ve] had many calls with China over the past 24-48 hours”, the president said.

Before that, he delivered the following assessment of the situation which is replete with the usual lies about what tariffs actually are (taxes on Americans) and references to Xi’s leadership qualities despite the fact that, as late as Friday afternoon, Trump described his Chinese counterpart as a “big enemy” (along with Fed chair Jerome Powell).

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As you can see, the president repeatedly insisted that Beijing has no choice but to make a deal lest the jobless rate in China should spike.

“I think President Xi is a great leader who happens to be a brilliant man, and he can’t lose three million jobs in a very short period of time and that’s gonna be magnified”, Trump explained. “So when you say ‘Do you think they want to?’, maybe they want to and maybe they don’t, but I think they wanna make a deal”, he continued.

It’s true that the last thing Xi wants is social unrest tied to job losses. And surveyed unemployment in China has risen. But let’s be honest: What you heard out of Trump in that soundbite is just a combination of the usual talking points and gibberish. That’s all it is.

Asked about market volatility and the fact that the unpredictable nature of the trade escalations is contributing to rampant uncertainty on a global scale, Trump waved his hands in an attempt to illustrate what “global economic instability” looks like, and then proceeded to claim that, in his estimation, it’s not instability. Then, he advised anyone who doesn’t like it to get over it.

“Sorry, it’s the way I negotiate”, the president said. He went on to claim that “it’s done well for me over the years”.

That depends on your definition of “well”. Trump has gone bankrupt six times in his business career. From the Washington Post:

Trump’s Taj Mahal opened in April 1990 in Atlantic City, but six months later, “defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin,” The Washington Post’s Robert O’Harrow found. In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. He could not keep up with debts on two other Atlantic City casinos, and those two properties declared bankruptcy in 1992. A fourth property, the Plaza Hotel in New York, declared bankruptcy in 1992 after amassing debt. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in 2004, after accruing about $1.8 billion in debt. Trump Entertainment Resorts also declared bankruptcy in 2009, after being hit hard during the 2008 recession.

Nothing further.