The Communist Chinese are the ultimate bullies. They talk tough and hold impressive military parades, but when push comes to shove, they crumble like a crushed fortune cookie. They’re bent on world domination, but they don’t want to get their hands dirty.
Take, for example, Donald Trump’s shock-and-awe tariff war, which is in fact predicated on fair play and reciprocity, and which seeks to align the nations of the world against China and its historically predatory trade practices. Last month, the president announced sweeping tariffs across the globe, including a whopping 145% tariff on Chinese imports. In response, the ChiComs put a 125% tariff on U.S. imports. Prior to that, Chinese spokesman Lin Jian had called what he mistakenly believed to be Trump’s bluff, huffing, “If the United States … persists in waging a tariff war, a trade war, or any other kind of war, the Chinese side will fight them to the bitter end.”
More recently, just over a week ago, China’s ambassador to the UN tried to rally the world to its side. “Under the guise of reciprocity and fairness,” said Fu Cong, “the U.S. is playing a zero-sum game, which is essentially about subverting the existing international economic and trade order by means of tariffs, putting U.S. interests above the common good of the international community and advancing hegemonic ambitions of the U.S. at the cost of the legitimate interest of all countries.”
Of course, what China calls “the existing international economic and trade order” is an order predicated on Chinese lying and cheating and stealing and dumping. So it’s only natural that they’d want to preserve the status quo.
The question is: Are we trying to save slave-wage jobs in China so we can buy cheap stuff at Walmart, or create stable, long-term, well-paying jobs here in America? Funny, but this point used to be made by those on the Left. As historian Victor Davis Hanson pointed out recently: “The United States is now nearing a $1 trillion annual trade deficit — a reality in the not-so-distant past that used to worry an array of investors like Warren Buffett (‘The trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us’), politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi (‘The fact is that U.S.-China trade is a job loser’), and economists like Paul Krugman (‘Mercantilism makes a fair bit of sense.’).”
But now that Trump is standing up for a prosperous America, these people are looking at their shoes. Or worse.
But Trump remains undeterred. And the Chinese are now starting to get the message. Evidence of this has come in recent days. As Bloomberg reported on Friday, the ChiComs are “quietly exempting about a quarter of US imports from tariffs.”
Also on Friday, as The Wall Street Journal reports, Beijing appears ready to address Donald Trump’s demands that it stop murdering our people by shipping the components of fentanyl to the Mexican cartels, where it’s then created and smuggled across our southern border to kill hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting Americans. “Fentanyl can be the icebreaker for the two countries to start with a more positive tone,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. “Both sides are eager to get some negotiations started.”
Both sides? Sure. But one side seems a lot more eager than the other.
To the bitter end? That bit of bellicosity doesn’t seem to have aged well. What we’re seeing here is a fundamental reality of tariff wars: The country that’s running a surplus gets hurt a lot worse than the country that’s running a deficit. That’s why China is now gnashing its teeth and quietly whispering uncle through a variety of channels.
We’re also seeing that bullies tend to blink when you stare them down. Or, as Mike Tyson might’ve put it, “Everyone has a plan, and then they get punched in the mouth.”
Still, China can’t afford to appear weak on the world stage, so we shouldn’t count our pot stickers until they’re out of the wok. Yet these early signs indicate that Trump and the U.S. are holding the better hand.
