Trade deficit thing was supposed to be a way to get around the games China plays with false numbers and subsidies and currency manipulation and such. I don’t think it was a good metric but that was the intent.

The tariff for tariff thing makes sense. Trade deficit thing was a flawed way of getting around China asshoe’ing people. Good for negotiation though. Talk to a country and maybe if they export a bunch to us, they can agree to buy the energy they’re already buying, but from us, at a fair or equal price. China doesn’t want to negotiate though.

Hard to say how it’ll turn out with them. Everyone else mostly said “okay, let’s talk about it” and that was it.