Trump Hardball With China Just Trump Getting Kicked Hard In The Balls By China

Dude, they're not going to call you.

Mm, balls. Photo by Judy Beth Morris on Unsplash

The stock market paused its freefall on Tuesday after Art O’Deal said he was not going to “play hardball” with China, insisting that he was in contact with China “every day” and that tariffs “will come down substantially.” But, two days later, in spite of rumors that they could go down to 35 to 65 percent (which is still insane and economy-wrecking) his 145 percent tariff has still not come down. And the only “hardball” is Trump getting kicked in the balls, hard. By China!

Within hours of Trump’s Oval Office press conference, China said it was FAKE NEWS, 假新闻, they had not been talking to Trump at all, and a spokesman re-iterated that they plan to “fight until the end.” Because guess who manufactures and prints all the cards Trump claims to be holding?

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Trump Toys With Maybe Pausing Wrecking The Economy, As A Treat

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Then today, Trump insisted that he WAS TOO talking to China, but he can’t tell you with whom, it’s a big secret!

“Well, they had a meeting this morning, so I can't tell you. It doesn't matter who 'they' is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we've been meeting with China.”

Was his name George Glass?

What a state of affairs, when you can trust China’s word over the US president’s, but here we are.

This self-started trade war hurts the US more than China. The US represents only 12 percent of China’s export market, but 16.5 percent of American imports. And Trump’s erratic, crazed bullying and YA TARIFFED, EVERYBODY is helping China find new markets and trade alliances that were unthinkable just a few months ago. Every market the US has shot itself in the dick with is a new opportunity for China to make deals in. The US’s self-immolation is possibly the best thing that’s happened to China’s global influence since the Silk Road.

Now China says it’s working on a partnership with Canada. And China, Japan and South Korea held their first joint trade talks in five years, agreeing to speed up talks on a South Korea-Japan-China free trade agreement. It now has what the South China Morning Post calls “a chance to kick its way out of the geopolitical box Biden had built around it.” Before January, all anyone in the West could seem to talk about was China’s dismal human rights record. But now everybody’s having too much fun laughing at all the hilarious TikToks trolling Trump and worrying about all the human rights violations in the US to fret much about any of that any more!

Oh boy, guess who’s mad that China called him a liar and won’t let itself be bullied into buying American goods at a hotel-minibar markup?

In case you missed it, Boeing, America’s largest exporter, tried to deliver two 737 MAX 8s to China, and China said “turn around and go back from whence you came, and shove your 50 other planes in production up your poop chute too.”

Maybe Boeing could complain to the World Trade Organization? LOL, Trump already hobbled it by blocking judge appointments in his first term, and this term quit paying the US’s WTO dues. So, nobody to complain to any more! But maybe it will make Boeing feel better to yell “default” at China, while watching Airbus and the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China get all of that plane business.

Mean China, they’ve been abusing us so hard with all of those iPhones, XBoxes, Barbies, and cheap pairs of yoga pants. It’s been hell! Can’t wait to craft myself some earbuds out of tin cans and twine. Maybe I can knit some yoga pants at home out of dog hair.

Stable Genius also pounded out that he’s mad at the Wall Street Journal, in which pollsters Mark Penn and Andrew Stein found 84 percent of Americans believe in free trade, and only 45 percent approve of his tariff plans, and only 41 percent of his efforts to curb inflation.

That a mind-boggling 41-45 percent of people approve of paying more for everything would seem like a win (who are those people?), and this pollsters’ article can’t tongue Trump’s shoe lifts hard enough, gushing that Americans hate “woke ideology” without putting “woke ideology” in quotes, lying that Biden had a “policy of de facto open borders,” calling the Democrats “socialist” and ridoinkulously claiming that “the hullabaloo over tariffs is overblown.” See, it’s not the tariffs themselves that are the problem, it’s all the dumbshits who have been unable to grok what Brain Genius is trying to do: “the president needs to do a far better job explaining his precise tariff goals.”

Haha, yes, it’s 5D chess and everybody is just too dumb to get it! And all he has to do to fix this mess is explain everything more expensive now in words that Steve Stockbroker, Wanda Walmartshopper, Betty Bondbuyer, and Frank Factorybuilder can understand. Which might work except that nobody can trust a word out of his mouth. The tariffs could go to zero tomorrow, or five thousand percent tomorrow, and US investment is not coming back until sometime after He Alone Can Fix It is gone. Nobody can commit to a financial plan when future costs can potentially change day-by-day based on the whimsy of a septuagenarian who bankrupted six companies! It seems risky to sign up for an Amazon subscription for poop bags, much less to invest in building a whole new poop bag factory. And he’s not the only problem, it’s also how Congress can’t be trusted anymore to stop him. Before January, the world assumed that the US economic system was so stable that one man’s delusional whims couldn’t wreck it. So much for that idea!

Transitioning the US to a bribe-based patronage system sure doesn’t help either. But sure, it’s all 5D chess, and nobody but Trump is smart enough to understand it, that’s the ticket, yeah.

OPEN THREAD!

[WSJ gift link: “White House Considers Slashing China Tariffs to De-Escalate Trade War“ / WSJ gift link: “A New Poll Shows the Peril of Trump’s Tariffs” / Guardian / ABC ]

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