Desperate Trump lies to press about China talks
Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2019 8:45 amRealizing just how badly his flagship trade war is failing, and consequently growing increasingly desperate and deranged, Trump is now starting to hallucinate. On Monday - after fresh US sanctions unfortunately forced the Chinese government to respond by applying punitive sanctions to US car imports - Trump stated that the Chinese government had phoned him asking for trade talks to be resumed. There was just one problem with the request: it never actually existed.
Mad Dog's instability is on the verge of torpedoing America's chances of ever again signing a treaty, contract or even a 1-week mini break arrangement with any self-respecting government. Is it time for the world to just hide the firework safely away in a big steel box and let it explode somewhere that it can't hurt any of the rest of us?
Perhaps nobody was more surprised to hear that China had called President Donald Trump’s administration to restart trade talks than the government in Beijing itself.
After a weekend of confusing signals, Trump’s credibility has become a key obstacle for China to reach a lasting deal with the U.S., according to Chinese officials familiar with the talks who asked not to be identified. Only a few negotiators in Beijing see a deal as actually possible ahead of the 2020 U.S. election, they said, in part because it’s dangerous for any official to advise President Xi Jinping to sign a deal that Trump may eventually break.
In off-the-cuff remarks to reporters at the Group of Seven summit in France on Monday, Trump claimed that Chinese officials called “our top trade people” and said “let’s get back to the table.” In subsequent appearances he portrayed the outreach as evidence China was desperate to make a deal: “They’ve been hurt very badly, but they understand this is the right thing to do.”
It all made for splashy headlines and momentarily boosted stocks, but nobody in Beijing officialdom appeared to know what he was talking about. Even worse, his efforts to depict China as caving in negotiations actually confirmed some of their worst fears about Trump: that he can’t be trusted to cut a deal.
China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday again said it was unaware of the phone calls mentioned by Trump, reiterating a statement immediately after his remarks. One of the first to call out Trump was Hu Xijin, chief editor at the Communist Party-backed Global Times newspaper, who said Monday that the U.S. president was exaggerating the significance of low-level talks and China’s position hadn’t changed.
Mad Dog's instability is on the verge of torpedoing America's chances of ever again signing a treaty, contract or even a 1-week mini break arrangement with any self-respecting government. Is it time for the world to just hide the firework safely away in a big steel box and let it explode somewhere that it can't hurt any of the rest of us?
