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| He only acts like the money man when he's actually very impotent in talking with the Chinese about trade wars. |
In this vein, have some sympathy for one Steven Mnuchin. Supposedly the Treasury secretary, whatever that person does (if anything) in the age of Trump, he's been thwarted at nearly turn in trying to fend off Trump's protectionist instincts. After (rather gullible) markets rallied on the back of news that the US would negotiate with China prior to another $200B of PRC imports being taxed, Trump "corrected" Mnuchin once more:
The day after financial markets around the world cheered the apparent good news that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was inviting his Chinese counterparts to sit down for further high-level negotiations, President Donald Trump undermined that very idea. “We are under no pressure to make a deal with China, they are under pressure to make a deal with us,” Trump said on Twitter on Thursday. “Our markets are surging, theirs are collapsing. We will soon be taking in Billions in Tariffs & making products at home. If we meet, we meet?”The upshot of all this is that whomever these administration lackeys Trump sends out, their counterparts have little faith in since Trump would just contradict his own people anyway. Ditto for Mnuchin in the upcoming negotiations which are unlikely to yield any tangible positive results:
The move marked just the latest instance of Trump undercutting one of his senior China deal-makers in public and illustrates why Beijing has become increasingly frustrated with its interactions with the U.S. administration. It also comes as Trump has repeatedly signaled his desire to continue raising pressure on Beijing and is considering the details of new tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports or even more.So even if Mnuchin or even Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross are regarded as (somewhat) more pleasant people to talk to than Trump, it doesn't matter anyway because whatever the Chinese think they've agreed to will not be honored by Trump. That is, they are lame emissaries who do not have Trump's ear:
After last year’s Mar-a-Lago summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was given the task of negotiating a 100-day deal with China intended to be the first building block in a bigger deal.If Trump sends these same neutered folks out to meet the Chinese to discuss tamping down the trade war over and over, it really makes sense to believe nothing will happen. It's the equivalent of negotiating in bad faith since you know the outcome already--Trump will say "no deal." The trade war's proportions will just continue to grow and grow.
Ross and his team, however, were quickly criticized for being too obsequious to the Chinese, especially after he hailed a reheated series of commitments by Beijing as a "Herculean" victory for the president. Since then, the commitments Ross has brought home to Trump have repeatedly been rejected by the president.
Likewise, just days after hosting Liu He, Xi’s top economic emissary, in the Oval Office in May, Trump made a very public U-turn by declaring that he would be proceeding with tariffs despite Mnuchin’s declaration that the trade war was “on hold.” The result has left Mnuchin discredited with Beijing as an interlocutor, according to people who have met with senior Chinese officials in recent weeks.
