"They are under pressure to make a deal with us," Trump tweeted on Thursday, referring to China. "Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing. We will soon be taking in Billions in Tariffs & making products at home. If we meet, we meet?"
Trump moving forward with additional $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods: report | TheHill
“I think the key in examining Trump is actually what will he do when people present him with facts?” he said. “For instance, it sounds a little esoteric, but the World Trade Organization, which the United States is a member of — very important, allows us to file complaints of unfair trade practices — and there’s a meeting in the Oval Office and the president says, ‘Well, the World Trade Organization is the worst organization ever. We lose all of our cases.'” Trump’s advisers presented him with data that showed the U.S., in fact, won 85.7 percent of the cases it brought before the organization, and he simply rejected their data. “He says, ‘No, that’s not true,’ and the people are saying, ‘Look, call the U.S. trade representative, your guy, and he will confirm this,'” Woodward said. Woodward said the president simply refused. “I don’t want to hear it,” Trump said, according to Woodward. “I don’t want to call him, I don’t want to deal with it.” The president flat-our rejects information that challenges his biases and beliefs, the reporter said. “At some point, he gets literally where the aides ask him, ‘Where did you get these ideas?'” Woodward said. “And he will say, ‘Well, I’ve had them for 30 years, they’re right and if you disagree, you’re wrong.'”
He instinctively sides with the hawks aiming to force US companies to repatriate their operations from China. As Mr Trump wrote in capitals on the margins of a G20 speech, ‘TRADE IS BAD’. For a while China’s leaders sought to defuse the conflict, relying on the advice of yesterday’s globalist luminaries: Henry Kissinger and ex-Treasury chief Hank Paulson; and the Goldman Sachs fraternity.
Beijing went along with the idea that Mr Trump is a “deal-maker” who uses threats to gain leverage, but can ultimately be assuaged by a publicity victory. They hoped that pledges to buy fungible US grains, oil, and liquefied natural gas would be enough to address his idée fixe on the $375bn bilateral trade deficit. It was a dead end. The China ‘doves’ - Tillerson, Cohn, McMasters - have been purged. A quartet of hawks have taken charge: Lighthizer, Bolton, Pompeo; and the White House trade guru Peter Navarro, author of Death by China, who last week called the country the “parasite of the world”. “Navarro thinks free trade is a suckers’ game. For him tariffs are the way to repatriate the supply chain to the US,” said Mr Chovanec..
Wall Street dangerously exposed as China digs in for Trump showdown