Trump announced a “trade deal” with China today. Here’s the deal: the 20% fentanyl tariff stays, the 10% reciprocal tariff stays, the effective rate on Chinese goods sits near 30% — the highest on any country on earth — and the bigger tariffs he threatened get paused for sixty days. That’s the whole agreement. He held a press conference to tell you nothing changed and that this is a tremendous win.
A tariff is a tax, and you’re the one who pays it. The Tax Foundation put a number on it: this trade war is the largest tax hike as a share of the economy since 1993, about $1,500 a year out of the average household. So when the man stands at a podium and announces he kept that tax exactly where it was, understand what he’s actually celebrating. He’s celebrating that the fifteen hundred dollars is still coming out of your pocket, on schedule, and that he gets to call it strength.
The sixty-day pause is the same con on a loop. Threaten a catastrophe, walk it back to merely terrible, take a bow for your restraint, reset the clock, run it again in August. The only thing that survives every round is the bill. China didn’t pay it last year, isn’t paying it now, and won’t be paying it when the timer runs out. You did, you are, and you will — while a guy who has never once had to choose between groceries and gas calls that the art of the deal.