"I'm not sure what to make of that," said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a partnership of labour groups and corporations. "The messages coming out over the past 10 days, it's like you are on a roller coaster going up and down and back and forth. It's hard to get any."
Others seemed to throw up their hands.
"Does anyone have the slightest idea what this means?" Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Twitter.
Trump pitched himself during the 2016 campaign as the great negotiator and consummate dealmaker, and he made China his biggest foil.
He has spent much of 2018 trying to corner China into changing its trade relationship with the United States, first by threatening massive tariffs, and then, that tanked the stock market, by dangling the prospect of freeing Chinese telecommunication's company ZTE from a regulatory headlock.
But his approach has been marred by missteps, China's defiance, and a fractured group of advisers that Beijing has sought to exploit. And his administration's own account of the negotiation has been littered with contradictions.
Trump has said he would easily win a trade war with China, but his advisers have stressed there will never be a trade war. Trump has said he has a wonderful relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, but he has also questioned whether the Chinese will ever agree to a deal that allows more American companies to boost exports to China. Last week, he and top aides disagreed over whether negotiations had even begun.
When Chinese leader Liu He left Washington on Saturday after several days of meetings and no concrete concessions, Trump spent the weekend trying to spin it as a breakthrough. But by Tuesday, he acknowledged the bipartisan pounding he was taking and started wondering whether any deal would come together.
Sitting in the Oval Office, he referred to Xi as a "world-class poker player." Maybe they would cut a deal, maybe they wouldn't, Trump said. Trump has said Xi asked the White House to ease restrictions on ZTE, and so Trump has ordered it done. But what is the United States getting in return? An agreement from China to buy more soybeans and liquid natural gas? How much. Is that it? No one seems to know.
Observers ranging from progressive Senator Kamala Harris, to his former chief strategist Steve Bannon pushed back on the White House's approach this week, criticism that was made apparent to Trump and others at the White House.
Senator Marco Rubio, whom Trump used to refer to as "Little Marco," sent Twitter posts about the White House's strategy with hashtags like #BadDeal and #DoNotCave.
Trump has shown a willingness to push ahead with his adversarial trade approach despite congressional anxiety, but there are few, if any, lawmakers who have expressed support for the White House's China strategy.
China is one of the United States's largest trading partners, with Americans purchasing more than $500 billion in goods from China each year. Trump, and members of both parties, have argued China has too many trade restrictions that make it difficult for U.S. companies to sell goods there, but he has had a hard time finding leverage to force China to open up more market access. Imposing tariffs on imports from China could drive up costs for American consumers, and if China retaliates with its own tariffs, it could hurt farmers and companies that sell products to China.
"The President's backpedalling results from the negative reaction of his base to the so-called 'deal,' said Daniel Price, a former international economic adviser in the George W. Bush administration. "But the real problem is that he is seeking unspecified deficit-reducing purchases, that will temporarily benefit only a few companies, instead of negotiating sustainable changes to Chinese trade practices that would increase market access, level the playing field and halt coerced technology transfer."
Few people seemed to have a solution for how to make changes without - at least temporarily - rocking the US-China relationship a bit.
In his new Twitter post, he wrote that a new "structure" was likely necessary between the United States and China. But he didn't say what that meant or what it would look like.
He could be referring to a formal trade agreement between the two countries, but that would be incredibly difficult and launch a process that with other countries typically takes years. It would also require a vote of approval from Congress.
It's also possible that the Twitter post was written as a passing thought. Three minutes later, Trump wrote another, completely unrelated Twitter post, about deregulation of the banking industry.
And less than two hours after the China tweet, he reverted back to a two-word post about ongoing investigations into his campaign that left little room for misinterpretation.
Trump tweeted "WITCH HUNT!"
- Washington Post
