Hal Brands
With a single Truth, President Donald Trump’s global trade brawl became a US-China cage match. On Wednesday afternoon, Trump announced that he was further elevating sky-high tariffs on China — to 150% — while pausing his commercial assault against nearly everyone else. Furious ex post facto rationalization notwithstanding, the president didn’t get here through shrewd statecraft.
But Trump may have found a winning strategy for the economic cold war against Beijing — if he overcomes the challenges that Chinese retaliation and his own worst instincts pose.
It has been a wild two weeks for Washington’s China hawks. On “Liberation Day,” Trump slammed China with tariffs but also hammered allies and partners the US needs on its side against Beijing. Then he abruptly fired David Feith, the key National Security Council staffer on technological issues, at the behest of a MAGA conspiracy theorist, Laura Loomer. In the days thereafter, US-China tensions and tariffs spiraled upward, just as Trump called a 90-day trade ceasefire with the rest of the world.
Don’t believe the spin that this was all a ploy to bait and isolate China. Trump appears to have been surprised by Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s willingness to go blow-for-blow on tariffs — Beijing hit back with a levy of up to 125% on US imports. He needed a global offramp once the bond market, and some of his supporters, revolted (not that the ceasefire entirely stopped the bleeding). But just as Napoleon preferred lucky generals to good ones, Trump has landed in a potentially advantageous place against Beijing.
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