China begins to realize it is not winning a trade war with Trump

Steven Mosher:

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... it is not too early to conclude that, despite their threat of retaliatory tariffs, China’s Communist authorities know that they have lost.

The increased tariffs to date, combined with the threat of more, have already clipped the wings of China’s economic rise. Its stock market is down 21 percent year over year, industrial output is slowing and its currency is weakening.

Looking beyond the bluff and bluster emanating from Beijing, there is evidence that Party leader Xi Jinping is looking for a way to stand down.
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The Chinese state-run media has been busily throwing up a smokescreen to cover Xi’s retreat. It has launched increasingly unhinged attacks on what it calls the “lunatic,” “insane” and “terroristic” Trump administration.

After all, the masses must be told who to blame for China’s recent economic difficulties.

The official Global Times has even published an article calling for US administration officials to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office.

In private, however, senior Chinese officials have come to view Trump as a Sun Tzu-like strategic genius.

Yes, you heard me right.

After the election, Xi Jinping tried to rope Europe and other Asian countries into a new, anti-US coalition, only to see this initiative fail.

The EU recoiled from Xi’s embrace and is now in serious free and fair trade talks with Washington.

Even the Philippines, which Xi tried desperately to woo with the promise of billions in investments, has now backed away from China.

But as Xi was stumbling, Trump went on the offensive. He signed a new trade agreement with South Korea and expanded defense cooperation with Japan and Australia.

Using the threat of tariffs as leverage, he even got Xi to agree to UN sanctions against North Korea, stifling the economy of China’s only formal ally.

This week, with the successful renegotiation of a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada — the USMCA — Trump is now able to control China’s access to the entire North American market.

Beijing officials now realize, even if many in the US foreign policy establishment don’t, that they are facing a master tactician, one who is moving steadily from deal to deal, getting as many concessions as he can, and then moving on the next.

But they also see Trump as not just transactional, but strategic. He is pressuring China not just on the economic front, but on the military and ideological front as well. They fear that his goal is not just to rectify the trade deficit, but to eliminate the threat that a rising China poses to the US.
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The Democrats still appear to be blind to Trump's tactical and strategic moves against the unfair Chinese trade practices which they themselves have been complaining about for years.  The Chinese appear to be more prescient that the Democrats are at this stage.  Trump was smart enough to recognize that the party with the trade surplus has the most to lose in such a battle.  Why didn't Obama think of that?  I suspect because he and his advisors saw the US as a country in decline and decided to manage the decline rather than fight back.