China

There is no shortage of quotes by Donald Trump that his opponents have tried to use against him — few of which have so far damaged him politically, still less embarrass the man himself. But there is one which really does have the potential to cause him harm in this year’s presidential election: his claim, in March 2018, that ‘trade wars are good, and easy to win’. That isn’t looking quite so clever now, two years later when the trade war that Trump started with China is still far from won. The deal signed today by Trump and Chinese vice premier Liu He brings a respite in hostilities, but there is a long way to go before the US can be claimed to have won, or even to have restored trade to what it was prior to 2018.

If Donald Trump wanted to deliver a seasonal gift to his ‘good friend’ Xi Jinping, the ‘Phase One’ trade deal reached this weekend fits the bill pretty well.  From the viewpoint of the Beijing leadership, it vindicates the Chinese refusal to budge during the long months of trade negotiations despite the threat of escalating duties. What has resulted is less the kind of overall trade agreement originally aimed at by the Trump administration and feared by China as interference in its economy —  and more of a purchase agreement accompanied by reduced tariffs.

Ever since Donald Trump began his trade war with China there have been two possibilities: firstly, that he intends tariffs to form a permanent feature of the landscape in relations between the US and China: a protectionist device designed to protect American jobs indefinitely; or secondly, that he sees his tariffs as a shock tactic devised to draw China into talks which it would otherwise be loathe to join, and with the ultimate aim of freeing up trade. The latest development, halving a set of tariffs which had been in place since September and canceling another set which had been due to come into place this week, points heavily to the latter.

It’s near the witching hour as the wolves begin to howl, the Tasmanian devil spins itself into a frenzy, and the red-eyed tree frog blinks into glass. The zoo is oddly quiet as US commandos (trained in zoology) scale the walls and deploy a well-placed and tiny explosive gum inside the lock to pop open the enclosure. The sleepy giant simply rolls over with dreams of bamboo and blasé dancing in its head. A bearded captain pulls out a black sack and pulls it over the animal’s head as they tranquilize the heavy sleeper — the panda rendition is complete. That’s right, I am proposing kidnapping the American domiciled pandas to expedite an end to the US-China trade war.

Of all the 9/11 conspiracy stories, one of the most persistent is the suggestion that al-Qaeda funded its operations by short-selling the shares of airline companies in the days before the attack. Inevitably, airline shares plummeted that day, netting short-sellers vast profits. While there was an increase in short-selling before the attack, no-one has proved one way or the other whether that was history’s most audacious case of insider-dealing or just a reaction to an industry which was already in trouble for purely commercial reasons. But is someone now trying on the same trick with the US-China trade war?