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‘It’s Over’: Peter Navarro Declares China Trade Deal Dead, Immediately Backtracks
"It's over".
That's what Peter Navarro told Fox's Martha MacCallum about the US-China trade deal in an interview late Monday. Risk assets shuddered across the globe.
"They came here on January 15th to sign that trade deal, and that was a full two months after they knew the virus was out and about", Navarro said, calling that "the turning point".
"It was a time when they had already sent hundreds of thousands of people to this country to spread that virus, and it was just minutes after wheel
The President misspoke about Venezuela. So much misspeaking going on with this Organization. Does not sound very organized.
One marker of my age is that I remember the time when the US had a diplomatic corps.
So much of this economic pain (and wretched incompetence) was brought upon us by ourselves.
I still find it fascinating and surprising that the Chinese are going along with the charade, they could deliver Trump a letal wound simply by acknowledging what everyone suspects, that phase 1 is simply a fantasy useful only to Trump’s re-election narrative. The fact China keeps taking punches without punching back (other than harmless twitter slaps) leads me to believe their calculations indicate they can gain more from humoring Trump, at least for the time being.
Yeah, on the face of it, it may seem surprising given Trump’s antagonism toward China, but looking at the situation, Xi has already seen how easy it is to bend Trump to his will if Bolton is to be believed (and I do believe it). Countering China’s moves requires coalition building and long-term planning which are two of Trump’s greatest shortcomings. In the meantime, US consumers will continue to pay the cost of the tariffs and farmers will be lucky to sell a few extra tons of soybeans and corn.
I would love to be a fly on the wall when foreign leaders discuss Trump. I’m guessing they are as incredulous as many of us, but they are laughing all the way to the bank while we stand agape as Trump’s raucous supporters go wild over him drinking a glass of water.
Why would China want to deliver a lethal wound to Trump? He’s the best US President for them.
He’s deeply destructive to the US both domestically and abroad. Your biggest adversary gets weaker and more distant from its allies every day.
His trade war is irritating but now unimportant relative to the pandemic effects, he’s so transactional that China can probably blunt anything really painful, and after he’s reelected who’s to say he’ll continue it?
He’s ultimately too weak to seriously challenge you over Hong Kong, the South China Sea or Taiwan.
You and Putin agree. Support Trump.
Underestimating the Chinese is a big mistake. If you are going to take them on you need your A game. On second thought make that your A+ game.
Misspeaking is used by this administration as a means to soften the blows of upcoming announcements. Many times the actual announcement is the original statement. However the negative reaction has already been teased and at times the markets have just yawned once the policy is announced. Would be an interesting study to link the times statements have been rolled back just to see in a few weeks the original statement generally reflects the policy. It is a process that normalizes extremes.
Thank you. Your point is well taken. The question still remains how much is intentional. I do understand that it can be used in such a way politically to gauge a reaction. Navarro is very emotional on the subject and he has been their pit-bull. I assume the President has sold dwellings to Venezuelans and should know what kind of response he would receive in Florida. Back and forth on testing. It seems everyday is retraction, un-retract day. If this is mostly organized it makes them sound disorganized and at this juncture in events seems would put off voters. Potus did mention during the last debates that he wanted to keep foreign leaders guessing. Is the U.S. electorate also an adversary? Time will tell.
One problem the American democratic system has is being able to plan in terms of decades when you may get an idiot elected in the next election and the train not only gets derailed it goes off the bridge. The Chinese and Russians don’t have this problem. This is why it is so important to be able to formulate as part of a group so that the primary thrust is not lost during changes of leadership of individual members. It may take three or four more years to fully realize what we’ve lost during the Trump/McConnell leadership debacle and it may take another three or four years to fully get back on track. There’s a lot of fence mending to do with our allies and a lot of mistakes to rectify but the correct road ahead shouldn’t be that hard to follow. And we must try.