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Showing my age: I've been thinking about Trump's approach to trade in terms of Nixon's "madman strategy" in foreign affairs: make people uncertain about how far you'll go as a negotiating tactic 1/
The idea was that this would make foreign adversaries cautious. A questionable theory even in context. But on trade policy it's an utter disaster 2/
For it isn't working as a way of pressuring China; as Greg Sargent says, Trump has zero understanding of the political economy (and even Greg doesn't mention the importance of Chinese nationalism) 3/ washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/…
But what it does do is frighten *US business*, which doesn't know where Trump will go next. The result is to freeze plans for business expansion and depress our own economy. 4/
Actually Paul Waldman ....
