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Frightened, the president asked Twitter to reject any idea that his administration was taking a position of conciliation towards Beijing.
"We are not under pressure to reach an agreement with China, they are under pressure to reach an agreement with us," he tweeted. "Our markets are booming, theirs are falling apart, we will soon be receiving billions of dollars in tariffs and products at home, if we meet, do we meet?"
As the President arrives in New York for the United Nations Annual General Assembly, the US-China trade war is looming larger than ever, threatening to destabilize the global economy if the dangerous titanization game between these two economic giants persists.
An administration disagrees with itself
In the days leading up to the announcement of new tariffs on the $ 200 billion worth of Chinese goods, Trump has canceled out the chances of a diplomatic solution sought by his secretary of the Treasury. Instead, he set the bar higher, and the prospect of negotiations to avoid a new set of tariffs between the two countries quickly faded.
"No US-China talks are planned yet," a senior White House official said on Friday. "That does not mean it will not happen."
At the same time, his actions have emboldened the supporters of the administration, who believe that the economic pain and the uncompromising attitude towards the fundamental requirements of the United States are the only way to force Beijing to change its practices. commercial. White House officials also insist that the current strength of the US economy offers the United States an excellent opportunity to take a tough bargaining stance against China.
Trump's conduct, according to aides, is a persistent aversion to appear weak, despite the disastrous warnings and political fallout. But he also allowed internal divisions to persist – a management style he prefers – offering an uncertain negotiating territory and giving Beijing an opening to exploit divisions among the president's best economic advisers.
The president continued to face internal opposition to his more aggressive business views from several of his top advisors, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Senior Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow.
But while the two men sought to dissuade Trump from continuing the increasingly expensive trade war with China, they were much less effective at deterring Trump from following his protectionist instincts than the president's advisers in the first year of his presidency.
"The biggest challenge for the administration right now is that you have people like Kudlow and Mnuchin who are smart and have beliefs that go in the opposite direction, but rather than vigorously trying to make those arguments." said one person aware of the internal deliberations of the administration on tariffs, which compared these efforts to "rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic".
Encouraged debate
Several administrative sources have minimized internal conflicts. Instead, these officials insist that the president encourage debate and declare that the president's advisers are united in affirming the importance of dealing with the Chinese problem.
The president's more hawkish trade advisers, such as US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and Peter Navarro, director of trade and industrial policy, now seem to have the president's ear.
The two councilors all gathered in the Oval Office several hours after Trump sent his tweet. There, the president was adamant that anything that was lower than the tough series of tariffs he had been threatening for months would be considered a capitulation, said three people aware of the episode. And not only in Beijing, but in the heart of the United States, where he remains convinced that his supporters will reward him for leading a trade war. His instincts seem correct for the moment; Polls have shown that his rates are very popular among Republicans.
The president, anxious to protect the farmers and industrial workers still flocking to his campaign rallies, urged his aides that the retaliation measures taken by China to punish the agricultural sector be subject to additional rights – 267 billion of dollars. equivalent to all Chinese products imported to the United States.
At the meeting, the sources said, Trump ignored concerns raised by some of his economic advisers that additional tariffs could nullify the diplomatic efforts led for several months by Mnuchin, whose president talks like Steve.
"We do the tariffs," said the president to his advisers, according to a person informed of the conversation. "Steve can keep talking, but we do the rates."
Before the announcement of tariffs, Mnuchin had invited the main Chinese negotiator, Deputy Prime Minister Liu He, to Washington. But negotiations between the United States and China were blocked after Trump ordered new tariffs on the $ 200 billion worth of Chinese goods last week.
Trump is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit scheduled for late November in Argentina.
During negotiations in Beijing earlier this year, Mnuchin favored face-to-face discussions with Liu, excluding intransigent Lighthizer and Navarro. This approach led to dramatic tensions between the US advisers, especially during a public match on the sidelines of these commercial negotiations on which Navarro broke out in Mnuchin.
The first director of Mnuchin and Trump's national economic council, Gary Cohn – sometimes alongside the then national security advisor, McMaster and Rex Tillerson – waved a united front urging the president not to act on wanted to hire since taking office.
And their efforts have been reinforced by the secretary of staff since the disgrace of President Rob Porter, who has aligned himself with the president's globalist advisers and managed the trade policy process for months. Porter has left the White House as a result of domestic violence charges.
Using levers at your fingertips
According to the president's instructions last year, the Department of Commerce initiated an investigation under a 1962 national security provision, known as Section 232. The Commerce Department found that imports of steel and aluminum "weakened our domestic economy" harming national security, according to the report.
The administration used Commerce's findings to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.
Cohn and Porter felt that the investigation and its findings were incomplete and repeatedly led the Commerce Department to revise the report, delaying the process, according to a person familiar with the process.
Even after a sharp contraction, the Commerce Department released a flawed report, which deliberately downplayed the negative impact on jobs in the downstream industries, which use cheap steel and aluminum out of the States. -United. Kevin Hassett, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, argued that tariffs would have a net negative impact on employment.
"The report is supposed to contain the advantages and disadvantages of tariffs – the Commerce Department has drafted a unilateral report, ignoring the loss of work in downstream manufacturing," the source said.
In response to CNN's questions about the exclusion of an analysis of potential job losses in downstream industries, a Commerce Department spokesman said that "the main concern under Article 232 is national security.
"Tariffs represent a small fraction of 1% of our economy, and the Department has implemented a product exclusion process to provide relief to downstream industries that are unable to source their steel or aluminum," the report said. spokesperson.
Now, Mnuchin is largely left without ally in the search for diplomatic solutions. Kudlow also pleads against curbing trade tensions with additional tariffs, but is poised to quickly turn into a public defender of the president's protectionist policies for television cameras.
Mnuchin's critics say he weakened the US's negotiating stance with China by ignoring the illusion that the Trump administration was united in its hard line against Chinese trade abuses.
A senior White House official admitted that the Chinese authorities had tried to bypass negotiations with the administration to try to influence the process, but insisted that officials were preventing the divisions from being exploited. internal.
"The Chinese will call and contact various government officials, and the members of the administration will make sure that everyone knows it and that they know what's in it." these conversations, "said the manager. "We coordinate through the White House with the Treasury, with the USTR, with Commerce on all these things.There is not this idea that anyone has a retrospective conversation of which he does not do not speak to others, a reality. "
Chaotic track
But while the president has sometimes turned his head over with his treasury secretary, he has shown no indication that he would be eager to demolish it. Trump's relationship with Mnuchin is one of the longest among Trump's advisors – dating back to the campaign – and many Trump allies claim that Mnuchin is one of the president's best advisers.
Others say that Mnuchin has largely gone hand in hand with a president who intends to wage a trade war that he believes can benefit his political base. At times, it meant surviving a chaotic process dictated mainly by Trump's momentum.
Last week's tariff rollout was subject to prevailing winds. Aides had determined that the formal announcement would come after the closing of the financial markets at 4 pm AND Monday, a tactic used for a long time by white houses to avoid stock-outs on unpopular news to investors.
