Winning!

After top Trump officials went to Beijing last month, the Chinese government wrote up a document with a list of economic and trade demands that ranged from the reasonable to the ridiculous. On Sunday, President Trump caved to one of those demands before the next round of negotiations even starts, undermining his own objectives for no visible gain.

[...]

Bullet point 5 is entitled, “Appropriately handling the ZTE case to secure global supply chain.”

“Having noted China’s great concern about the case of ZTE, the U.S. will listen attentively to ZTE’s plea, consider the progress and efforts ZTE has made in compliance management and announce adjustment to the export ban,” the document states.

Trump took a big step in that direction Sunday when he tweeted that he had instructed the Commerce Department to help get ZTE “back into business, fast,” only weeks after the Commerce Department cut off its supply of American components because it violated U.S. sanctions on sales to North Korea and Iran. Trump’s tweet set off a panic both inside and outside the administration among those who worry that Trump is backing down from his key campaign promise to stand up to China’s unfair trade practices and economic aggression.

  WaPo

The art of the deal.

Also...

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed cutting ZTE and other Chinese “national champion” companies off from U.S. infrastructure development funds because the U.S. intelligence community views their technology as a national security risk.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters issued a rare tweet clarification, explaining that Trump wanted Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to “exercise his independent judgment” to resolve the ZTE case “based on its facts.”

Yeah, sure. That's the ticket.

Cleanup on aisle three!

Some officials believe that the camp of Trump officials trying to avoid a trade war with China — led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow — are winning the never-ending battle for the president’s limited attention. Mnuchin is reportedly trying to control the China negotiations and elbow out U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director Peter Navarro.

If Trump's model for the presidency is his position on "The Apprentice" (and time and time again we see every indication that it is), he couldn't have picked a better crew to surround him - everybody is out to get everybody else.

My Washington Post colleagues reported that Trump may have gotten ahead of a brewing “mini-deal” whereby the United States provides relief for ZTE and, in return, China eases its restrictions on U.S. agricultural imports. If that’s the case, the Trump administration “just got blackmailed,” according to Derek Scissors, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

And they also got shafted. China is buying soybeans from Russia now. Not only are Trump's people shivving each other, they're incompetent.

The United States gets one shot to show China that we are serious about forcing it to change its behavior — and, if it won’t, that we are serious about defending ourselves.

I guess we blew that, eh?

Trump really wants that Nobel Peace Prize. He's in trouble on that count after North Korea blasted John Bolton and threatened to withdraw from an announced meeting. Maybe China can help. Let's see, what all does Xi want?

[H]ere are some of the other demands in China’s proposal, to watch out for on Trump’s Twitter feed:

●  The United States commits to eliminating the sanctions imposed after China’s crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989
●  The United States relaxes export restrictions on technology such as integrated circuits
●  The United States allows U.S. government agencies to purchase and use Chinese information technology products and services
●  The United States agrees to treat Chinese investment and investors equally to those from other countries and place no restrictions on Chinese investment
●  The United States agrees to ensure Chinese businesses can participate in U.S. infrastructure projects
●  The United States agrees to strengthen protection of Chinese intellectual property. (Seriously!)
●  The United States agrees to drop its anti-dumping cases against China at the World Trade Organization
●  The United States agrees to terminate its investigations into Chinese intellectual property theft and not impose any of the sanctions Trump already announced

Okay, that's not much. I think we can handle all that.

P.S. What US infrastructure projects? Is Trump working on any structure other than "the wall", which he's actually only working on in rhetoric? Also, I think you could put that "(Seriously!)" notation after all of these demands.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Strike that Nobel Prize reason for Trump's move on the Chinese front. This is the obvious reason:

That brings me to Trump's bizarre about-face on the Chinese phone manufacturer ZTE, in which he promised to help restore the company's jobs after being hit with U.S. fines and sanctions. Are we really to believe that this has nothing to do with China loaning $500 million to a huge Trump-branded development in Indonesia days beforehand? It simply beggars belief — indeed, there is practically no other comprehensible explanation.

  Ryan Cooper