Serious Trump Won Again! Tariffs against China went from 125% to 10%!

[syed putra]

Even anti Trump CNN has to acknowledge that Trump has played a master stroke locking in a 10% tariff regardless of how the negotiations play out.

How Trump managed to get his much-needed China trade victory​

By Phil Mattingly, CNN

5 minute read

Updated 9:58 PM EDT, Mon May 12, 2025

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (L) and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer speak to the media in Geneva.
Valentin Flauraud/AFP/Getty Images

CNN —

President Donald Trump’s shock-and-awe tariff approach threatened to rupture the global financial system and drive the US economy into recession. Nervous about the prospect of empty store shelves and reignited inflation, Trump sent in his even-keeled and professional negotiators to Geneva to snag a win.


The unexpectedly dramatic de-escalation with China laid the groundwork for a growing series of trade negotiations that may produce a handful of rapid-fire, if less than fulsome, bilateral agreements to reduce US trade deficits.


“We actually have a fresh start with China,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said in an interview on CNN News Central. “That’s the way to think about these negotiations.”


The decision by both the United States and China to drop stratospheric tariffs by 115 percentage points at the conclusion of two days of talks marked the most significant development in a policy approach that has been equal parts maximalist and messy. The de facto trade embargo between the world’s two largest economies had produced domestic and global economic pressure that appeared on the brink of calamity.


The de-escalation sent markets soaring across the world Monday, as it shed light on a Trump administration’s strategy to maintain significantly higher tariffs while incentivizing its largest trading partners to come to the table with offers.

Sending the serious people​

In Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Trump sent lead negotiators who are viewed by market participants and their Chinese counterparts as serious, levelheaded and empowered.


As those talks start in earnest, the ongoing effort to secure deals with roughly two-dozen other countries was given a boost last week after a small-scale agreement with the UK. That provided a model for what Trump wanted in the urgent scramble to secure bespoke deals with the US, according to several foreign diplomats involved in the bilateral talks.


The negotiators, parameters for negotiation and clearly serious approach from both sides that will drive the next three months are all viewed as tangibly positive signs by Trump’s advisors. Whether they lead to a substantive outcome remains an open question, but as one advisor put it to CNN, “this a hell of a lot better than the alternative both of us were staring down.”


“This is really the first time it’s been possible to actually see the path to land this plane without some cataclysmic economic disaster,” a Republican senator told CNN. “Doesn’t mean we will, but that’s a lot better than where we’ve been.”


The path from the market-panic-inducing “Liberation Day” tariff announcement on April 2 to this point was hardly linear. Trump’s advisors have long insisted, against plenty of evidence to the contrary, that it was all a deeply strategic roadmap that incorporated every possibility.


The fallacy of that insistence is laid bare by Trump’s own view that “flexibility” is paramount. Bessent, who is fond in private settings of talking through the game theory he sees as animating Trump’s approach, cites the value of the “strategic uncertainty” created by his boss.


It was Trump, after all, who hit the pause button on his hardest hitting “reciprocal” tariff rates on roughly 100 countries. And it was Trump who first publicly floated significant de-escalation with China after, in private internal discussions, his team weighed even more dramatic off-ramps to step back from the brink.


The bond market, supply chains blinking red and increasingly apocalyptic warnings from executives across major industries all served as critical accelerants for Trump’s personal pivots. The actions in some cases had the effect of hanging his own advisors out to dry hours after they’d been on television pledging there would be no exceptions, delays or revisions.


There has, however, been a broad strategy designed to push trading partners to the very place the administration finds itself now, officials say.

The new reality​

In the end, the Trump administration has somehow managed to lock into place dramatically higher tariffs – a 10% universal rate across the globe and sector tariffs that largely stand untouched. And, while recognizing that tariffs aren’t going back to zero, trading partners are still lining up to get a deal done with the United States.


That lawmakers and foreign diplomats alike appear willing to overlook – or even outright accept – that a 10% global tariff rate is basically a nonnegotiable reality at this point is perhaps the best window into the moment Trump has led the world into.


Trump’s team said that shock-and-awe strategy to get a “win,” even out of significant tariffs that remain in place was the strategy all along.


“We have had a plan, we have a process in place, now with the Chinese, we have a mechanism in place for future talks,” Bessent told reporters in Geneva.


The China talks would always be the most difficult, labor-intensive and time consuming. The lessons from Trump’s first term negotiations are deeply internalized among not just his advisors, but Trump himself.


For Trump, trade is the lynchpin to everything. That includes the India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement he told reporters was, in his view, primarily attributable to his promises of rapid increases in trade flows to both nations.


It seemed fitting that the most astute observation in the rush to analyze the dramatic de-escalation in US-China trade relations came from the man who drove them to the brink on an entirely unrelated yet no less consequential matter.


“People have never really used trade how I use trade,” Trump told reporters Monday morning.


CNN’s Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.

Trump will keep the 10% import tariffs no matter what. It's probably same as imposing 10% gst. So why not just impose gst?

 

[Leongsam]

Trump will keep the 10% import tariffs no matter what. It's probably same as imposing 10% gst. So why not just impose gst?

With GST every single consumer has to pay the 10%. With tariffs the additional 10% could well be absorbed by many of those wishing to export to the USA so the consumer does not have to end up bearing the cost.

 

[congo9]

China Has Quietly Won the Trade War—and Now Leads the World

Ricardo Martins

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
—Vladimir Lenin

A Silent but Seismic Turning Point
In a silent but seismic shift, President Xi Jinping has ended five centuries of Western global dominance—not with bombs or blockades, but with strategic patience and unyielding confidence. Without firing a single shot, China has emerged not only as the victor of Trump’s chaotic trade war but also as the world’s new de facto leader.

This transformation did not happen overnight, but the past few years have accelerated an inevitable rebalancing, especially after Trump’s first administration. The West, and particularly the United States, once sat atop a unipolar world order. Today, that dominance has not just eroded—it has been decisively challenged.

The Biden administration, like Trump’s before it, ultimately came to terms with a critical truth: global decoupling from China is economically untenable. The U.S. Treasury now openly acknowledges that tariffs are unsustainable, signaling what amounts to a strategic surrender in a trade war that began with bravado but ended in backpedaling.

The Cost of Financial Hubris

America’s attempt to sever its economic entanglement with China unraveled under the weight of its own financialization. Tariffs imposed during the Trump years wiped out trillions in global capital, not by transferring wealth to Beijing but by annihilating it. Markets froze, supply chains fractured, and America’s inflationary spiral deepened as Chinese imports became pricier and scarcer. Grocery chains and tech firms sounded the alarm: shelves were going empty, and production lines were halting. A $1 trillion trade dependency can’t simply be wished away.

China, by contrast, played the long game. It neither retaliated rashly nor blinked. It held five powerful economic levers in reserve: U.S. Treasury holdings, currency manipulation, control over rare earth elements, asymmetric trade dependencies, and vast cross-border investments. Each of these tools remains in Beijing’s back pocket—unleashed only when necessary. That quiet strength was Xi’s real strategy: win without war.

A Battle of Ego vs. Shared Future

In truth, this wasn’t merely a contest of policies—it was a duel between two men: Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. One ruled by consensus and long-term vision; the other by tweetstorms and impulsive tariffs. While Trump chased headlines and short-term victories, Xi pursued civilizational restoration. His goal was not just to withstand American pressure, but to lead a new era of global governance rooted in sovereignty, economic connectivity, and multipolar cooperation.

Xi Jinping’s vision for the world is a shared future for mankind: a multipolar global order based on mutual respect, non-interference, economic cooperation, and sovereign development, which, to some extent, revives the spirit of Bandung and the aspirations of the Global South. It emphasizes connectivity through initiatives like the Belt and Road, stability over confrontation, and a shift from Western-dominated liberalism, where rules and norms are dictated by the market and leaders follow the market’s ruling, to a more inclusive, pragmatic global governance model rooted in civilizational respect.

The results are stark: The U.S. Navy is aging, and its shipbuilding capacity is stagnant. Military overstretch has weakened alliances, with even Europe questioning the future of NATO. Meanwhile, China builds ports, railways, and satellites. Through initiatives like the Belt and Road and critical mineral diplomacy, Beijing now anchors vast swaths of Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia into its sphere of influence, not by force, but by finance and infrastructure.

A Different Kind of Leadership

The question no longer is whether China will lead the world—it already is. The question is how it will share that leadership. Xi’s vision, contrary to Western paranoia, is not zero-sum. As Zhou Bo, senior fellow at Tsinghua University, eloquently put it in his recent book Should the World Fear China?, “The world is becoming less Western, and it’s about time the West learned to listen.”

What the West perceives as fear, the Global South sees as opportunity. In Africa, Chinese workers build roads and hospitals; in Latin America, Chinese investments fuel clean energy and education. Even amid complex territorial tensions, China has maintained a foreign policy grounded in non-interference and regional diplomacy. When was the last time China toppled a government or bombed a nation into regime change?

Toward a Shared but Multipolar Future

To those who say China seeks to upend the international order, the response is simple: What is the order worth if it only serves the few? China doesn’t reject rules—it seeks fairness in their making. The Belt and Road isn’t a trap, as some Western media narratives suggest; it’s a lifeline for nations long ignored by Washington and Brussels. Even the narrative of Chinese “militarism” collapses under scrutiny: China hasn’t engaged in foreign combat since 1979, while U.S. interventions stretch across every continent.

This doesn’t mean China is perfect—no nation is. But it does mean the West must move from denial to adaptation. The future will not be American or European-dominated. It will be co-governed, with China holding a preponderant role. The West must recalibrate, not in fear, but in mutual respect.

In the words of Zhou Bo: “You cannot be the world’s strongest power and still claim victimhood.” The same could be said of the U.S.—it must accept that others have risen, and that humility, not hegemony, will define the 21st century.

From Pax Americana to Pax Sinica?

We are indeed entering a new era—not marked by the collapse of the West, but by its maturation. Learning from China doesn’t mean becoming China. It means recognizing that leadership today is measured not just in aircraft carriers or GDP, but in resilience, diplomacy, and the ability to build.

The West ruled the world for 500 years. It is now time to share the stage with a resurgent power, one that has reclaimed its rightful place and carries within it the wisdom of a 5,000-year-old civilization.

How did china lead the World ?
China didn't have a good currency and good monetary policy. China didn't open up their market for other nation. China's finance and banking lacketh the depth and length of Wall street.

 

[superpower]

How did china lead the World ?
China didn't have a good currency and good monetary policy. China didn't open up their market for other nation. China's finance and banking lacketh the depth and length of Wall street.

China doesn't want to replace the US or USD-based order with another unipolar order based on RMB. It's aim is to lead the world into a multi-polar world order where trade is not dependent on a single currency or a single nation's monetary or fiscal policies, which enriches only a particular group of already rich countries, leaving the rest of the world further and further behind.

 

[syed putra]

With GST every single consumer has to pay the 10%. With tariffs the additional 10% could well be absorbed by many of those wishing to export to the USA so the consumer does not have to end bearing the cost.

I dont think it work that way.
You buy ex factory and have it shipped to US where the taxes are imposed and paid for by importers and charged to consumers when it's sold.

 

[syed putra]

China doesn't want to replace the US or USD-based order with another unipolar order based on RMB. It's aim is to lead the world into a multi-polar world order where trade is not dependent on a single currency or a single nation's monetary or fiscal policies, which enriches only a particular group of already rich countries, leaving the rest of the world further and further behind.

The EU was suppose to do this with the Euro but they backed off.
China merely giving a alternative option for countries ravaged by sanctions. And it's cost are way below using USD to trade.

 

[eatshitndie]

That's because new stocks have not arrive.

by the time they arrive the tariff will be 30%. shrewd importers will ask tiong suppliers to delay shipments.

 

[superpower]

Even anti Trump CNN has to acknowledge that Trump has played a master stroke locking in a 10% tariff regardless of how the negotiations play out.

How Trump managed to get his much-needed China trade victory​

And how is 10% tariffs even a victory? Trump could just have imposed a blanket 10% tariff and be done with it. He might have started a trade war, but it was definitely no victory since we haven't seen how the tariffs will play out in the medium term.

But instead he chose the idiotic route of trying to bluff and bluster his way through with 145% tariffs only to backpedal in the face of China's retaliatory tariffs. Who has egg on his face?

 

[Leongsam]

I dont think it work that way.
You buy ex factory and have it shipped to US where the taxes are imposed and paid for by importers and charged to consumers when it's sold.

You don't seem to understand how things work.

I was about to compose an explanation and an illustration but I'm getting lazy in my old age and decided to let AI do the explaining for me.

Here's what AI says :

---

When an importing country imposes tariffs, it’s often assumed the importing country bears the cost, but in many cases, the exporting country ends up paying part or all of the tariff. This happens due to how markets and pricing respond to trade barriers. Here’s a concise explanation:

1. Price Adjustment by Exporters: To maintain competitiveness in the importing country’s market, exporters may lower their prices to offset the tariff. For example, if a $100 product faces a 20% tariff ($20), the exporter might reduce the price to $80 so the total cost (price + tariff = $100) remains attractive to buyers. Effectively, the exporter absorbs the tariff cost.
2. Elasticity of Demand: If demand in the importing country is elastic (buyers are sensitive to price increases), importers will buy less if prices rise due to tariffs. To avoid losing market share, exporters are forced to cut prices, shifting the tariff burden onto themselves.
3. Supply Chain Dynamics: Exporters often face pressure from distributors or retailers in the importing country to keep final prices stable. To preserve relationships and sales volumes, exporters may reduce their margins to cover the tariff.
4. Currency and Market Power: The extent to which exporters pay depends on their bargaining power and currency dynamics. If the exporting country’s currency is weaker or their market position is less dominant, they’re more likely to absorb costs to stay competitive.
5. Pass-Through Rate: Economic studies show tariff “pass-through” (how much of the tariff raises consumer prices) varies. If pass-through is low (e.g., 20-50%), exporters bear most of the cost. For instance, during the U.S.-China trade war, research estimated Chinese exporters absorbed 75-90% of U.S. tariffs on some goods by lowering prices.

However, the outcome depends on specifics:

• Inelastic Demand: If the importing country’s demand is inelastic (e.g., for rare goods), consumers may bear more of the tariff through higher prices.
• Market Structure: If exporters have strong pricing power or few competitors, they can pass costs to importers.
• Trade Agreements: Pre-existing agreements or retaliatory tariffs can complicate who bears the cost.

In summary, exporters often pay tariffs by lowering prices to stay competitive, especially when demand is elastic or market conditions force them to absorb costs. The exact split depends on economic factors like demand elasticity, market power, and product type.

---

Hope that helps to explain matters.

 

[Leongsam]

And how is 10% tariffs even a victory? Trump could just have imposed a blanket 10% tariff and be done with it. He might have started a trade war, but it was definitely no victory since we haven't seen how the tariffs will play out in the medium term.

But instead he chose the idiotic route of trying to bluff and bluster his way through with 145% tariffs only to backpedal in the face of China's retaliatory tariffs. Who has egg on his face?

The 145% tariffs is like a choke hold in MMA. It forces the opponent to beg for mercy. It is applied and then released within a short time.

A 10% tariff would be like a sparring match with punches and counter punches going on indefinitely without a proper conclusion

 

[syed putra]

Children, Let this ceca sexplain.

 

[Leongsam]

Children, Let this ceca sexplain.

She either has an agenda or does not understand how things work.

It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that the 145% tariffs were going to be lowered or removed at some point. They were there to evoke a response and the response is the deal that has been cut for 90 days while a more permanent deal is being worked on.

The bottom line is that China has reacted by cutting tariffs on US products so it is a win no matter how you do the math.

The alternative was to do absolutely nothing and allow the status quo to continue or to pussy foot around with small increments which have resulted in a long drawn out affair.

 

[superpower]

She either has an agenda or does not understand how things work.

It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that the 145% tariffs were going to be lowered or removed at some point. They were there to evoke a response and the response is the deal that has been cut for 90 days while a more permanent deal is being worked on.

The bottom line is that China has reacted by cutting tariffs on US products so it is a win no matter how you do the math.

The alternative was to do absolutely nothing and allow the status quo to continue or to pussy foot around with small increments which have resulted in a long drawn out affair.

It's the optics that count. To back down from your tariffs in the face of your adversary's retaliatory measures is to lose face, no matter how you look at it.

If Xi had instead called Trump stat and said, 'hey bro, can you cut me some slack, let's work something out', then that could be conceived as a victory.

But no, Xi just slapped on 125% punitive tariffs and waited patiently for the inevitable call. Which came. In poker terminology, Xi called Trump's bluff, and Trump folded.

 

[Leongsam]

It's the optics that count. To back down from your tariffs in the face of your adversary's retaliatory measures is to lose face, no matter how you look at it.

If Xi had instead called Trump stat and said, 'hey bro, can you cut me some slack, let's work something out', then that could be conceived as a victory.

But no, Xi just slapped on 125% punitive tariffs and waited patiently for the inevitable call. Which came. In poker terminology, Xi called Trump's bluff, and Trump folded.

No matter how you spin it when there's a trade deficit of almost 300 BILLION per year in China's favour it's pretty obvious which country is under more pressure to resolve the issue.

And you'd be naive to think that Mr Trump actually called Mr Xi. Such matters are negotiated behind the scenes by the minions first and for all you know the whole scenario was already scripted from day one. There was no way that China would lose face by folding after the first salvo from the USA. The retaliatory tariff from China was, of course, a mandatory part of the wayang process.

In the end both sides will be able to claim victory which is the best outcome for any negotiation even those we do on a daily basis in our lives.

However we all know that China needs the US market far more than the US needs China.

 

[rotiprata]

tats t problem with dark glasses