Say congratulations to Donald Trump: The tariffs worked. Trade with China collapsed in May.

Trump talks a lot (incessantly) about all the money America’s going to make from draconian levies on Chinese products, and critics rightly deride such claims for failing to mention who pays the tariffs (US importers and, ultimately, US consumers).

Implicit in such criticism is the notion that trade will continue. But depending on the size and scope of the levies, that’s not necessarily true.

As even Scott Bessent was compelled to admit earlier this year, Trump’s triple-digit tariffs on the Chinese constituted a de facto embargo. Although those levies were “paused” as part of the May 12 Geneva detente, it’s impossible for US importers to stay abreast of America’s constantly changing trade strategy. And, so, bilateral trade simply ground to a halt last month.

Exports from China to the US plunged almost 35% in May, data released on Monday, ahead of trade talks in London, showed. That was the biggest drop since the onset of the pandemic.

China’s trade with the rest of the world rose more than 10%. The net result was a 4.8% YoY increase in overall shipments abroad, slower than the 6% economists expected.

Frankly, it’s not even clear what Trump’s trying to accomplish at this point. During his first term, you could scarcely go a day without hearing someone (usually Trump) carrying on about “our wonderful American farmers,” intellectual property protection and other allusions, vague or not, to a set of goals.

This time around, it almost feels like tariffs for the sake of them. That’s not to say Bessent and Howard Lutnick didn’t bring a list of demands with them to London on Monday, it’s just that if you asked the average American to elaborate on the strategic objectives for “Trade War 2.0,” I doubt very seriously that even one in 20 could name a single goal.

That’s a problem. When there’s a war going on — hot or cold, shooting or economic — it’s very important the electorate be able to discern the objective, particularly if and when the casualties start to mount. If the executive can’t distill a coherent message which answers the simplest of simple public inquiries (“Why?”), support for the war effort will generally wane.

As discussed here last week, “Blame China” still resonates on the campaign trail, and not just for Trump. Scapegoating Beijing for everything that ails working Americans is a bipartisan blame-casting exercise. But on some days, I wonder if that message might be losing some of its appeal with voters.

Arguably the most pressing issue in American society today — and I think the likes of Rahm Emanuel and other hard-nosed political strategists eying the mid-terms and beyond, would agree with this — is the cost of housing. You could argue, I guess, that by robbing Americans of “good” factory jobs, China’s contributing to the affordability crisis that’s put the “American dream” out of reach for everyday people. But that’s a pretty tenuous claim.

And besides, a lot of the “stuff” that goes into homes is only affordable because it comes from China. Let me put it to you this way: I’m well-off by almost any standard that applies to “regular” people, which is to say if you control for the fact that I’m not an “elite” of any sort, I do well. But if I had to furnish my properties with items made somewhere other than China (or locales where China diverts exports to skirt US tariffs), I’d have a lot of empty rooms.

That to say this: I don’t know how much domestic support Trump’s actually going to have for sustaining a cantankerous trade war of attribution with the Chinese for the duration of his second term. I don’t think this is actually all that important to most American voters at this juncture, and I think the appeal of the message will, like Elon Musk’s presence at The White House, “wear thin,” and pretty quickly.

A Pew poll conducted in April showed that although Americans are still inclined to negative views of China, the share who expressed a fervently unfavorable opinion (i.e., “very”) fell 10ppt this year versus last. Similarly, the share which identified China as “an enemy” fell 9ppt, and the share who said China constituted the greatest threat to the US 8ppt.

To be sure, the figures in the chart for 2025 still suggest Americans are broadly distrustful of Beijing. The 42% of respondents who mentioned China when asked which country poses the greatest threat outstripped all other nations, Russia included. And the total share of those who hold an unfavorable view (i.e., the “very” contingent shown in the chart plus the “somewhat unfavorable” share not shown) was 77%.

But even that latter stat — the 77% figure — was down from 2024, when more than eight in 10 held some manner of unfavorable opinion. A small drop to be sure, but as Pew noted, it marked the first decline in half a decade.

The color accompanying the Pew poll found that the GOP share with a “very” unfavorable view of China dropped a dramatic 16ppt. “Republicans are 14ppt less likely than they were in 2024 to label China an enemy of the US,” Pew remarked, adding that “since we first began asking this question in 2021, Republicans have generally been more likely to call China an enemy than a competitor, but they are now equally likely to use each label.” Paradoxically, that decline could actually reflect Trump’s election, but it’s worth noting all the same.

It seems to me that if Trump wants to sustain a trade war with China that costs already cash-strapped middle-class Americans at the Walmart checkout line, he’ll need to stoke renewed disdain for Beijing among everyday Americans. And it’s not clear he’s even interested in doing that.

Bottom line: I don’t think this is a winner for Trump on any interpretation of the word “winner.” It doesn’t do much to further the culture wars in America (which he thrives on), it raises costs for consumers (which he ran on reducing), it speaks to the only bipartisan issue in Washington (when partisan rancor’s the oxygen for the MAGA fire) and even if he hasn’t come around to this yet, he will eventually because it’s unavoidable, there’s no such thing as “winning” a trade war.

By pretty much every account and appearance, Monday’s trade talks in London were another stage-managed, pre-planned affair designed specifically to produce a second “agreement” in two months, this time entailing a lifting of some US export controls in exchange for more promises that Beijing will cease throttling rare earths.

This is, was and always will be a silly charade. I don’t have a great answer for how to address China’s track record of subtly and then, as time wore on, not-so-subtly, abusing the privileges afforded the country after WTO accession. But what I do know is that the Trump approach — go-it-alone, unilateral tariffs and increasingly empty threats — is a road to nowhere.