Back in April we talked about Trump’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors — a guy named Stephen Miran. 

His blueprint for leveraging tariff threats, and the United States’ role in global security and financial stability, has entailed extracting “burden sharing” from our allies and trading partners.

And to execute on that plan, we’ve talked about Trump’s “escalate-to de-escalate” strategy.  It’s working. 

Suddenly, trading partners sharing the burden is a base case deal:  accepting tariffs, opening up their markets, spending more on defense, buying more American goods, investing in U.S. manufacturing and buying our Treasuries. 

The Japan deal is done.  And as of this afternoon it’s said that Europe is near a deal, suprisingly (reported by the FT).

So, Trump and company have quickly drawn most of the world back into alignment with the U.S., using the U.S. consumer, U.S. financial stability and U.S. security as leverage.

With all of this in mind, as we’ve discussed over the past several months, it seems obvious that the only way to resolve the China problem (i.e. its multi-decade predatory export model) is through a globally coordinated agreement with trading partners, to put China in the global trade “penalty box” (to isolate China).

The question is, do these deals come with commitments to isolate China’s economy?