Sundance:
“…Ultimately an openly hostile and aggressive position by China is exactly what President Trump would prefer. Pretense is a painstakingly annoying negotiation strategy and President Trump is predisposed to be a notoriously ‘get-to-the-nub-of-it’ type of negotiator. Down South the term would be: ‘he doesn’t suffer fools’.
The current status-quo, where international investment is paused to wait and see what happens (while corporations make alternate plans), is buckets more favorable to President Trump than Chairman Xi. Essentially, the current stalemate has nimble companies departing China, the Belt-and-Road initiatives shrinking and Beijing is burning through cash to subsidize their current manufacturing base. [The currency devaluation is ongoing]
Existing tariffs remain a financial drain on China, not U.S. consumers. In actuality U.S. inflation continues to decline. Meanwhile President Trump is hitting Xi with public questions about Beijing purchasing U.S. agricultural products; a previous promise.
In actuality President Trump knows the purchase promises were the typical false-promises of Beijing; but, well, the lies have a value in calling out Panda’s duplicity.
The potential tariffs (25 percent on $300+ billion in goods) sit on the table as a weapon President Trump would love to start using. However, in the dance with the dragon Lighthizer and Ross have to wait to allow the panda mask to fully drop. Currently Chairman Xi Jinping is trying to keep the financial/investment class from noticing the panda mask is slipping. However, that ruse can’t last too much longer. Thus the dance continues.
At the 30,000/ft level China appears to have accepted that President Trump isn’t going to concede an inch. Therefore their position in the trade stand-off is timed to exhaust around the 2020 presidential election. Despite what the U.S. media are claiming, Beijing is making very visible moves to withstand more than a year of status quo strain…”