No Trade Deal in Near Term

Axios: "He wants them to suffer more": Inside Trump's China bet

What we're hearing: "He wants them to suffer more" from tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods, said a source with direct knowledge of Trump's thinking, and the president believes the longer his tariffs last, the more leverage he'll have.

Why this matters: Trump's trade war with China is at the "beginning of the beginning," according to a source familiar with Trump's conversations. And his team doesn't expect much from the tentatively planned meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires next month.

The Trump economic team has done no substantive planning so far for the bilateral meeting's agenda, largely because the purpose of the meeting is for Trump and Xi to reconnect, eyeball each other, and feel each other out amid their escalating trade war.
"It's a heads of state meeting, not a trade meeting," a source with direct knowledge told Axios.

Trump is again right for the wrong reasons:

Behind the scenes: Trump has privately boasted that his China tariffs have driven down the country’s stock market. Experts say the trade war has hurt market sentiment, but the stock market has never been a reliable barometer of Chinese economic strength.

A-shares are not a good measure of Chinese economic sentiment, it's housing. In order to crack the housing market, however, Trump would need to inflict more pain for longer, to the point where China can't contain the fallout and home prices start sinking 1 or 2 percent per month.

Trump is pursuing the right strategy for his intentions, even if he isn't watching the right signals. Or maybe the stock market comments are for public (and China's) consumption.