Plans for Donald Trump to use his trade war with China during his re-election campaign may be on hold as factions within the White House are battling whether to kill off the signature international achievement of his three and a half years in office.
According to a report from the Daily Beast, trade advisor Peter Navarro is leading a group of "trade hawks" who think the deal the president worked out has been a failure.
The report begins, "President Donald Trump bet the house that getting a sweetheart trade deal with the Chinese government would boost the American economy and his electoral odds before the election. Now, with that election less than 100 days away, some members of his inner circle are pushing him to make a new bet: that he’ll win if he blows it all up."
Noting that the president is hearing from "pro-deal" advisors at the White House the report points out that some on Trump's team his team want to campaign for re-election promoting his deal with China as well as using China as a cudgel against presumptive Democratic opponent Joe Biden.
But the faction that wants to blow it up has been inundating the president with "data, pictures, and charts that they claim demonstrate how China still is not buying American goods at a level high enough to satisfy the president’s aims."
Noting "the president had been so enthusiastic about getting a deal jammed through before the 2020 election," the Beast reports the president is now having second thoughts believing looking, "tough against a major adversary may have political upside."
However, that may have a downside too, with the Beast reporting, "it would also risk the self-inflicted detonation of one of Trump’s biggest policy initiatives, one that has consumed nearly four years of the president’s political capital, and one that grew out of a trade war that’s taken its toll on American farmers and businesses."
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