The Trump administration’s not going to let a stock market decline get in the way of doing what’s in the long-term interests of the US economy, Scott Bessent boldly asserted on Wednesday.

How many times have we heard that before? (A lot.) And how many times has Donald Trump backed off trade restrictions he previously insisted were necessary to restore American “greatness” in a transparent attempt to rescue a flailing stock market? (Also a lot.)

Everyone’s brave — cavalier, even — about prospective stock market losses. When stocks actually start falling, you discover virtually no one has any appetite for equity market declines even when in the service of some greater good.

So it’s with quite a bit of conviction that I declare Bessent’s posturing a bluff, and I can assure you that’s the way they see it in Beijing, where the Party followed up this week on sweeping rare earth curbs with measures aimed at countering US taxes on Chinese ships.

Bessent on Monday ripped China’s new critical minerals controls in highly abrasive terms, even as he said Trump and Xi were still likely to meet in person next month in South Korea. For his part, Trump’s gone from furious to calm and back to furious in the space of just a few days. His latest threat entails an embargo on Chinese cooking oil in retaliation for China’s deliberate boycott of US soybeans.

Speaking to CNBC Wednesday, Bessent said the administration “won’t negotiate because the stock market is going down.” “We will negotiate because we are doing what is best economically for the US,” he added.

Again, that contention’s contradicted by more or less everything Trump’s said and done since April 9 when, aghast at the 15% decline his “Liberation Day” tariffs triggered for the S&P, Trump “paused” implementation of the levies, catalyzing one of the largest single-session advances for US stocks in recent history.

So predictable is Trump’s penchant for folding to the stock market that it has its own acronym: “TACO.” Beijing’s aware of that, and on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal ran a feature piece which said, among other things, “China is holding a firm line because of its conviction that an escalating trade war will tank markets, as it did in April.”

Xi, the article went on, “expects that the prospect of another market meltdown ultimately will force Trump to negotiate” next month at the APEC summit.

Bessent was furious. Wait, that’s not true. Trump was furious, and Bessent was a conduit for Trump’s ire, castigating the Journal‘s account as akin to “CCP dictation.”

Got that? The Wall Street Journal, the world’s foremost source of capitalist propaganda, is a Mao mouthpiece — a communist conspirator.

That ridiculous suggestion is indicative of why no one takes this administration seriously. You don’t need to take “dictation” from Beijing to suggest Trump might fold in the face of a declining US stock market. All you have to do is observe Trump’s behavior. Just last week, he folded up like wet cardboard at the first sign of equity angst.

The Journal‘s right, and everyone knows it. The stock market is in fact “one of the few checks on a president who has wielded executive power aggressively.”

Now if only stocks would drop every time Trump takes another step in the direction of eroding the rule of law in America, we might get our republic back.