CHINA/TARIFFS/TRADE DEALS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “China’s leaders sound supremely confident that they can win a trade war with President Trump. The state news media has depicted him as a reckless bully intent on undermining the global trading system, while presenting the Chinese government as a fair-minded champion of free trade. And China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has used the standoff to reinforce the Communist Party’s message that the United States is determined to stop China’s rise — but that it no longer can. China is already too strong, its economy too big… Missing in the bluster and the propaganda are the questionable methods that China has adopted to squeeze foreign companies out of key technology markets — and the fact that in the cold-eyed calculus of economics, China is more vulnerable to a trade war than officials admit. Exports account for a big share of Chinese economic growth. Because the United States buys so much from China, Washington has many more ways to hit Chinese manufacturers.”
–Steven Lee Myers, Why China Is Confident It Can Beat Trump in a Trade War,” The New York Tiems online, April 5, 2018