China backtracked on almost all aspects of U.S. trade deal – sources

How will that work? I only see them increasing the overcapacity as the market for commodity stuff gets even smaller

> success of the Belt&Road strategy requires a shift from US/Western export to vast investment elsewhere;

China had almost 20 years to do so, but Chinese companies were blindly charging ahead into US market. Only very recently, the business community began to realise that the rest of the world is "not so bad" business-wise." Xiaomi and BBK brands were a hit in India, but their C-levels ignored India up until they were almost buried in money from Indian market.

China pushing back publicly (rather than making a deal and then ... simply not following through) against the US doesn't play well in the US as far as getting someone they want elected. Americans hurting economically are the folks cheering on Trump to some extent (well a vocal portion) and aren't likely to back a deal that isn't perceived to be favorable.

If the administration in China is playing an internal game, that makes a lot more sense than trying a potentially very counterproductive play in the US.

Instead of making this a civilised conference resolving trade issues its a pissing match between two superpowers. This is exactly the situation that the EU has tried to avoid with its own dealings with these two alpha male gorillas.

If we were dealing with rational countries here there would indeed be a deal. But this isn't a trade dispute between the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Reminds me of a lot of corporations. “This doesn’t make sense but it’s policy”. Never mind that they wrote the policy themselves.

China's, or better said Liu He's, stance is "we will not do anything if it has chance to blew into Xi Jinping's face"

Xi brandished how he tames "capitalist tigers" by wholly appropriating the credit for the trade deal. Now he is being made to look stupid with a single twiter post.

It is likely he will not touch the talks personally out of fear for more embarrassment

Liu He might be only a fourth vice premier in line, but only one Xi has personal ties to.

If things are worse, voters could be just as angry and willing to vote for someone who wants to fight ... more with China over trade.

This could be a case where China might want to stoke a problem, and get more blowback than they otherwise would have. The current POTUS (elected dude to a lot of things including economic concerns by some voters) has already proven you can put up a fight and the sky doesn't fall... and a politician might not see making a deal advantageous to China as a good political move, or even likely to produce a lot of economic benefit.

A US import tax on Chinese goods is a tax on American consumers and manufacturers.

The way to tax China itself would be an export tax on money bound to China, including the transfers of immobile or intangible assets to Chinese nationals or corporations via domestic exchanges or brokerages--and including the cash value of transferred intellectual property.

Imports are paid for by exports. If you're worried about a trade imbalance, you could always say that the other nation can keep sending more goods if they want, but we'll only pay for them with trade goods and services, not with cash, or ownership of land and capital.

Edit: I also have very sour memories of Obama complaining about the trade deficit with Germany. In that case none of the real issues like we have doing business with China existed. In essence Obama was complaining about German companies being too successful and Germans saving too much money. Maybe I'm particular sensitive to trade deficit rhetoric because of that. If the passing field is level, then maybe the deficit is the fault of the country that has the deficit. In this case the playing field is very skewed and that's the problem.

Just a quick search, I couldn't find any mainstream, usually Republican leaning economists, magazines, or newspapers that said it was a good idea.

Reducing new borrowings and doing dramatic gestures to reduce debt? No, he is not doing that. US deficit shot up dramatically as giant loads of new t-bills went into circulation, and financial players got strong signal on US interest rates.

To reduce the trade deficit, the first thing to do is to reduce the fiscal deficit — a thing that has little to do with trade.

1. Poor execution & personnel at odds with each other leaking play-by-play details has led to a lot of market fluctuation and difficulty for the market to price in the "real world". Anyone exposed to this gets a first hand look at the monetary cost of this. 2. Real impacts of the tariffs felt by american manufacturing & farmers as well as american consumers. If trump wanted an extended trade war he should have been much more upfront with people & prepared to cushion it. You say it's "some tariffs" but this minimizes real household struggles. 3. General impacts of "losing the people". He's a highly polarizing leader; anywhere from beat street to wall street to pennsylvania ave, people who don't get along with others will find it very difficult to be trusted on any given issue even when they're right. This is a near-constant in life, some people manage to be a net-benefit with that attitude but it's usually by leaning on other crutches like being highly gifted. Trump isn't that person.

> China deserves the pain train for backpedalling.

Fine, I'll accept your premise here. Now, on the flip side:

Why do I deserve "the pain train" for what's happening with China? Why should I and others I know suffer for this?

> I don't understand the hate Trump gets for doing what needs to be done.

Because things for me were good before, and now they are less good as a direct result of things he's doing. Trump isn't doing anything to alleviate that, and if he is, I'm not seeing the results.

Finally, he serves me, so I have every right to demand results. He made lots of promises, and he's failed many of them already.

So answer my questions. Especially with the context of him not saying we'd have to suffer for his failures.