Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said this morning that there's still a chance they will resume talks with Chinese officials before Trump further escalates his trade war by imposing another $200 billion in tariffs on Chinese products.
My immediate reaction to this news was to ask 'what talks?'
Indeed, Bloomberg reported just last night that American and Chinese officials have stopped meeting and there are no plans to resume talks.
Trade talks between the U.S. and China have recently halted after three rounds of negotiations amid mounting tensions between the two largest economies in the world, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing five people familiar with the situation. Officials from the U.S., led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, have met with a Chinese team led by Vice Premier Liu He since May without any significant progress, the news agency said. For the moment, there are no plans to resume talks to break the impasse, setting the stage for a drawn out battle between the two economic giants.
Even when Trump regime officials were talking to their Chinese counterparts, you could hardly describe what they engaged in as "talks."
You may recall that Trump more or less set Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross up to fail on his last trip to China. Trump reportedly insulted Ross to his face before dispatching him to China where everyone knew he would fail.
But success was never an option. Whether or not Wilbur Ross or Steve Mnuchin ever knew what they were doing is beside the point. At the end of the day, they still work Donald Trump. Trump still doesn't even know what a trade deficit is or why we have one.
The Trump regime can't hold "talks" with anyone, for any reason, because Trump is incapable of talking. Trump is not even capable of carrying on a coherent conversation with a single person.
"Talks" are suppose to lead to "deals," but Trump neither talks or makes deals.
I was going to compare trying to make a deal with Trump to making a deal with a toddler, but if you've ever dealt with a toddler you'd know that Trump's relationship with reality is actually somewhere beneath that.