US President Donald Trump's escalation against Beijing makes it harder for his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to conclude a face-saving deal, and he is thus plunging himself into a trade war, writes Mark Gongloff.
The writer referred to what the Chinese general and the old military expert Sun Tzu said in a famous book on the war, "For an encircled enemy, it should leave room for escape," and after Gongloff that President Trump, who did not author any famous book on the deals, could have taken With that advice.
Trump - with a stronger economy and more tariffs - has always seemed to have the upper hand in his trade war with China, but continues to underestimate not only China's tolerance of economic pain but also the need for Xi Jinping to escape the conflict without seemingly. Like a loser.
So Trump continues to make those mistakes, such as last week's threat of more tariffs, which China avenged by warning that it was ready to launch a currency war, a threat that led to a sharp fall in stock markets and increased the risk of a recession.
Despite pressuring a besieged opponent, Trump has done a bad job by reducing the chances of a face-saving deal. China's move to devalue its yuan on Monday also exposed a lie by Trump's claim that Beijing has borne the brunt of his tariffs.
If the talks continue in vain, prompting China to pursue its currency threat, this shift will only end the gold-like global currency system and the Bretton Woods system, warned George Magnus, an economist at the China Center at Oxford University.
He concluded his article with a paragraph from Sun Tzu's book referred to at the beginning of the article that "history has not seen a nation that benefited from the long war."