By all accounts, China appears to have the resolve to push back hard against Trump’s tariffs — even though Trump might think that “they don’t have the cards.”
China won’t yield.
For China, it’s once in a lifetime opportunity to change the world order.
Chinese Communist Party is the one ruling the country, and they don’t need a democratic vote. The unifying idea is to never go back to centuries of humiliation from American and European imperial powers.
Meanwhile, in the U.S.:
- Shipping volumes are down to pandemic era levels.
- U.S. farmers won’t survive without subsidies.
- Walmart and Home Depot CEOs warn of shortages by the summer.
- The U.S. stock market is like a casino, jumping up and down on haphazard messaging from Trump and Bessent: tariffs on, tariffs off, trade negotiations on, trade negotiations off.
- Home loan financing refusals skyrocketing.
- The majority of Americans are worried about tariffs affecting their ability to buy what they need.
- Consumer confidence hits record lows.
Meanwhile, China was prepping to withstand a storm like this for years.
After Trump’s first attacks in 2017, China started to work towards removing risks of working with the U.S., building relations within Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and Africa.
Trump’s hostile rhetorics and indiscriminate tariffs against Canada and Europe are making them realize the importance of stable partnership with China.
“America First” is turning into “America alone”.
Unless there is a swift reversal of the course by the Trump administration, things can turn really bad for the USA — and this will weaken the whole collective West.
There are no 2 ways about it: Trump’s trade war against China is going to hurt the U.S. itself. It already has.
China is waiting for him to restore what he broke.
But it’s like a broken mirror. You can put all the broken pieces together, but it won’t be the same mirror.
The missing one is trust.
No one trust him now. He changes what he promised by days.
Any deal reached could turn to waste paper as long as he denies it.
And China won’t let him play that way.
Trump is acting like a child, and he needs to learn to be a responsible, mature president.
But what he’s been taught is how to be a businessman whose influence is quite limited.
A rich businessman, born with a silver spoon, can boldly put his ideas into practice.
At worst, it won’t affect too many people.
But as a president of a powerful country, any decision of his could turn the world into chaos.
In China there’s a saying, “govern a big country as you would cook a small fish.”
When cooking small fish, you shouldn’t flip them too often, or else they would fall apart.
So is governing a big country, it must be performed with the highest level of care.
