En Garde in the bunker…

‘I’ve read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I’ve made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind’. ~ Donald J Trump

That quote from ‘The Art of the Deal’ is right up there with ‘sometimes you just have to know when to walk away’, and actually brings back memories of another great president, one Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Reykjavik was the site of a summit in Iceland where, in October 1986, a nuclear-arms deal was proffered by the Soviet party boss, Mikhail Gorbachev. Ronald Reagan stunned the world by walking out. It turned out that his move set up our victory in the Cold War.

The consequence that China might be meddling with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is never lost on the mind of a Donald Trump whose book on negotiations is still going strong after all these years; 32 to be exact (published 1987).

Like president Reagan, this master stroke of a walk-away by our fearless president is a strategic pause that will be used tactically by him to tighten the screws on Xi Jinping. China’s economy cannot be rendered less competitive by our tariffs nor can it afford the loss of access to our market which the ratcheting up would result in.

Stone-faced president Trump about to pull out…

From the perspective on display, the ‘back story’ has the president playing his hand perfectly, using our navy as an example of freedom of navigation within the South China Sea around the Spratly Islands, while giving a thumbs up to Mnuchin and Ross to turn up the economic pressure. As ‘sundance’ puts it in Conservative Treehouse:

‘Hanoi Aftermath – I suspect we will see the U.S. Treasury (Mnuchin) and U.S. Dept. of Commerce (Ross) begin to start focusing on, and punishing, those who have been violating the North Korea sanctions. [Benefit = strong enforcement will disproportionately hurt China]’

Just watch, he is going to open up further economic negotiations with other nations, while China dithers. In the meantime Kim Jong-un has to backtrack and reconsider all options. Never underestimate president Trump’s mastery of strategic leverage.

Check this out from ‘sundance’ and the crew over at Conservative Treehouse …

Despite several positive and remarkable comments from Kim Jong-un, President Donald Trump and the North Korean Chairman could not come to a substantive agreement after two days of negotiations on the process to denuclearize the Korean peninsula.

During a press conference prior to departing Hanoi, Vietnam, President Trump cited two issues: (1) A North Korean demand for the immediate removal of all multinational economic sanctions; and (2) The unwillingness of North Korea to be fulsome about their missile and nuclear locations.

In the backdrop of the Hanoi summit, and as U.S-China trade negotiations continue, the Trump administration suspended the implementation of the March 1st tariff increase on Chinese goods.  Unfortunately, attaining this goal may have empowered a cunning Chairman Xi Jinping to influence the demands of DPRK Chairman Kim.

A covert influence connection will become clear if President Trump now takes an even more firm trade and tariff position toward China. We’ll keep watching closely.

Chairman Xi may have won this round, but we can expect an angered and strategic President Trump to hit back twice as hard.

In this dance with the dragon President Trump cannot simply reverse the tariff suspension, that approach would be too obvious.  Instead my suggestion would be to look for signs of the U.S. reviewing Chinese violations of the North Korea sanctions.

A key indicator will be if over the next several weeks, we see the U.S. Treasury and/or Commerce Department beginning to point out those who are violating the sanctions against North Korea.

It’s an open secret that China is the largest violator; but President Trump has been giving everyone a pass due to progress on both the China trade and DPRK nuclear talks.

See full article through link at bottom…

Full presser…