'More surrender than Trump victory': WSJ pummels 'second major retreat in less than week'

The Wall Street Journal called President Donald Trump’s white flag to China this week—his “second major retreat” in less than a week—“a win for economic reality.”

“Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—and by Mr. Trump’s own hand,” writes the WSJ editorial board.

Trump scrapped the brunt of his 145 percent tariff Chinese goods this week and fell back on a 10 percent global base-line tariff, plus a 20 percent tariff related to China's fentanyl trade for a total rate of 30 percent. China, in turn reduced its retaliatory tariff to 10 percent from 125 percent. The deal is good for 90 days.

"As with last week’s modest British agreement, the China deal is more surrender than Trump victory," the board said. “Apart from the tariff rollback, neither side announced any broader concessions on the substantive trade issues that weigh on the U.S.-China relationship. Those include China’s barriers to American firms, especially in services such as digital and financial, and its chronic intellectual-property theft.”

The editorial board added that many of these more pernicious practices got worse under Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

With “scant sign” of purported trade deals amid Trump’s market turmoil his tariffs have left the economy “with higher trade costs and greater uncertainty for business.”

But “if there’s a silver lining to this turmoil,” the WSJ believes it is the markets forcing Trump to “back down from his fever dream that high tariff walls will usher in a new ‘golden age.’

“The age didn’t last two months, and it was more leaden than golden. White House aide Peter Navarro, the main architect with Mr. Trump of the Liberation Day fiasco, has been repudiated.”

“Mr. Trump will not want to admit it, but he started a trade war with Adam Smith and lost. He’s not the first President to learn that lesson,” the paper argues.

Read the full Wall Street Journal report here.