And neither does the Politico story excerpted below. China faces an unpredictable foe in Trump and his tariff threats, but China is playing the long game of imperial expansion and domination and only seeks a path navigating through what it knows is the temporary and incoherent threat Trump represents. Trump does not bring a fundamental rethinking of China. Once he is gone the US trade stance will return, unfortunately, to the status quo ante, continuing the hollowing out of the West by enriching a few who sell these communist liars and thieves the rope they'll use to hang the rest of us.
From the story here:
The administration in May said it wanted China to commit to reducing the trade deficit by $200 billion by 2020. It also asked China to stop subsidizing high-tech sectors like robotics and alternative energy vehicles identified in its China’s strategic economic plan, cut tariffs on “all products in non-critical sectors” to levels at or below U.S. duties and assure that it would not challenge U.S. actions taken in intellectual property disputes.
Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s chief [trade] negotiator, said at the time that it wasn’t his goal to “change the Chinese system,” despite his long list of criticisms of that system.
