Trump Says No Use For China Advice From People Who ‘Failed Miserably’

The White House forged ahead on Wednesday with claims that the US and China have been talking over the phone about trade.

In remarks to Fox Business, Marc Short said he’s “optimistic” about an eventual deal, but “can’t say” when an agreement might ultimately come to fruition.

Apparently, Marc (Pence’s Chief of Staff) decided to sub for Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow in the obligatory daily Fox cameo.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was back on Twitter implicitly lampooning anyone who’s endeavored to give him pointers when it comes conducting foreign relations with a rising economic superpower and would-be hegemon.

“So interesting to read and see all of the free and interesting advice I am getting on China, from people who have tried to handle it before and failed miserably”, the president said, without specifying whose “advice” he was tacitly spurning.

“In fact, they got taken to the cleaners”, he added, before insisting that “we are doing very well with China”.

That depends (heavily) on your definition of “well”. It’s been nearly 18 months since the president famously declared that “trade wars are good and easy to win”, and all that’s come of the dispute with China is more tariffs and meager gains on US equity benchmarks with bouts of harrowing volatility interrupting a painful grind higher.

That annotated visual is a testament to the folly inherent in the president’s increasingly quixotic trade war. Objectively speaking, it simply hasn’t worked. China hasn’t given ground on the myriad key “sticking points” which stymied negotiations in the first half of 2019 and the yuan has fallen enough to offset most of the tariff impact, although that’s not to suggest the trade war hasn’t affected the Chinese economy – it most assuredly has.

The last couple of weeks have made in abundantly clear that the administration is concerned about the prospect of the global economic malaise engendered by the trade spat boomeranging back and making landfall in the US just in time for the election.

Although official after official insists that they don’t “buy the recession narrative”, nobody is talking about a downturn more often and in more bombastic terms than the president himself.

And yet, it seems far-fetched to say that Trump will give up the fight with China, even if it means imperiling his reelection bid.

“This has never happened to them before!”, he shouted on Wednesday morning, an allusion to the idea that Beijing isn’t prepared to weather the storm.

“China on Tuesday issued 20 directives to boost consumption, in an effort to further tap the domestic market, not putting so much emphasis on trade talks”, Global Times editor Hu Xijin said Tuesday. “China’s economy is increasingly driven internally [and] it’s more and more difficult for the US to press China to make concessions”.