When President Donald Trump launched his trade war on the world, he
issued a stern warning: “Do not retaliate and you will be rewarded.”
China ignored the warning. It was rewarded anyway. This morning, Trump
largely suspended his trade war in return for nothing but promises of
ongoing discussions. There is a lesson here for everybody Trump
threatens, whether countries or businesses or universities.

The unveiling of the Trump global tariff regime was accompanied by a
distinct form of dominance theater. The president and his gang assured
his targets that if they submitted to his tariffs, he would repay their compliance. Any country that dared defy him would suffer terribly.

“I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump,” posted Eric Trump. “The first to negotiate will win—the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life.”

Most of the world accepted this advice, only to discover the difficulty
of making global trade deals with a president who doesn’t seem to
understand how trade works.

China, however, retaliated with countermeasures of its own, imposing
steep tariffs on American imports. Trump decided to make an example of
the country. “Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” he announced
on Truth Social. (This figure eventually increased to 145 percent.)
Other countries, which had showed proper respect, would receive a
merciful reprieve. “The world is ready to work with President Trump to
fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction,” claimed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Trump held out for one month before backing down. Under the new 90-day agreement, tariffs on Chinese goods will come down to 30 percent;
China’s tariffs on American goods will likewise decline to 10 percent.
“The consensus from both delegations is that neither side wanted a decoupling,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced at a press
conference in Geneva, as if the whole thing had been one big
misunderstanding. The decades of China allegedly “ripping off” the
United States were apparently forgotten, along with China’s insolence in retaliating and the supposed need for the U.S. to reduce its reliance on Chinese imports. The administration isn’t even pretending that it forced China to pay any special price for its defiance. It is memory-holing the
entire “do not retaliate” episode and moving on as if the point this
whole time was to get along better with Beijing.

As an exercise in trade policy, this makes no sense. But to treat
Trump’s behavior as if it were narrowly tailored to the objective of reordering global trade misses the symbolic role it plays. Trump is
performing a character, the presidential version of the boss he played
in The Apprentice, sitting in a plush leather chair doling out justice
to quavering supplicants.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/05/china-tariffs-trump/682776/

Trump will get an award for his performance in "Paper Tiger".

--
"And off they went, from here to there,
The bear, the bear, and the maiden fair"
-- Traditional

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)