President Trump didn’t seem to mind as his worldwide tariffs set off stock market sell-offs and wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth. “Be cool,” he told Americans.
Then he blinked on Wednesday afternoon in the face of financial turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields that could shake the dominant position of the dollar and the foundation of the U.S. economy.
By pausing some tariffs for dozens of countries for 90 days, he also gave away something to his main rival, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, with whom he’s engaged in a game of chicken that risks decoupling the world’s two biggest economies and turning the global economic order upside down.
Mr. Xi learned that his adversary has a pain point.
As the world learned this week, Mr. Trump cannot completely ignore the financial markets or the Wall Street and tech billionaires who supported his campaign. They reached out to his cabinet members to convey their concerns. Even loyalists like Elon Musk and William A. Ackman, the hedge fund manager, expressed their disagreement with the president’s tariff policies.
It’s hard to imagine that any Chinese entrepreneur would dare to do the same, or like Mr. Musk, have the channel to convey their concerns to Mr. Xi, who has pushed aside his political opponents and cracked down on private companies. If Mr. Trump aspires for absolute power like Mr. Xi, he has a long way to go.
“Tariffs and even economic sanctions are not Xi Jinping’s pressure points,” Hao Qun, an exiled Chinese novelist who writes under the name Murong Xuecun, wrote on X. “He is not particularly concerned about the hardships tariffs may cause for ordinary people.”
Some commentators online evoked the Great Leap Forward to show the Communist Party’s ability to enforce austerity at times of difficulty. The party waged the campaign between 1958 and 1962 to rapidly industrialize China. Its policies defied science and the laws of nature, resulting in a famine and tens of millions of deaths.
While starving people in the countryside were resorting to cannibalism, Chairman Mao instructed the farmers to eat grain bran and edible wild plants. “Endure hardship for one year, two years, even three years, and we’ll turn things around,” he said.
Mr. Xi, whom some Chinese view as Mao’s successor to the mantle, likes talking about the benefits of withstanding hardship.
In a state media article about Mr. Xi’s expectations for the young generation, the word “hardship” was mentioned 37 times.