re: Is the big argument now gonna be whether Trump blinked?

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China is pulling all the cards they have.

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China is going to be making a lot less Nikes and other shite that companies use that cheap labor for.

You have 70-80 countries that have reached out to initiate talks, 10 are trying to negotiate, 6 have offered concessions, 2 retaliated so Trump bumped them even higher, 1 thinking of retaliation and Mexico with no retaliation.

They say he blinked, but if a country is willing to negotiate and the US keeps the higher tariffs in place, I wouldn’t think those negotiations would accomplish what Trumps is shooting for. I’m pretty sure he still kept a 10% on the ones he’s currently working with.

What do they call it, negotiating in good faith?

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Hard to have any leverage when every other country knows they can just call his bluff and wait and Trump won’t actually follow through with tariffs.

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He did exactly this on the board China tariffs. Continually postponed them, for various reasons. But some assured us that no one would expect he was just bluffing. Again.

Either way the admin lost a lot of credibility over this. If nothing else they seem incapable of having a unified narrative coming from the Whitehouse. Unless thst gets fixed it’s going to be a long disappointing 4 years.

I think that it was probably due to him thinking he'd quickly achieve compliance. Also, I think he likes to stick it to the Euro snobs and Canada, who has been a sort of wonderland for American progressive for a long time. Honestly, he's shockingly petty. That being said, he is often right on the larger strategic points. Trumps MO from 2016 onward is to win then blow himself up by going a step too far.

I'm hoping he'll declare victory with the EU/Canada after some limited deal and focus on China. China is and has been focused on taking us down for along time.