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I think with the so-called "90 day pause" (not really a "pause" from what's so far discernible in the fine print) and the China-US tit-for-tat escalation, those those two developments should be stable enough to make it possible to finally analyze the situation of the past week for a bit without being being at the risk of rendered immediately outdated within the next hour.

With the 90-day "pause," this has in effect turned from a US trade world war into more of the same Sino-American trade war that has been ongoing since Trump I. What does this mean? It means that the pressure on China has risen far more now that the US has just stated it will fully concentrate against it, though it could be argued that the whole tariff gimmick was all about China in the end anyways.

The damage done to the markets will likely recover for a while due to political reasons since the "pause" was conceded precisely because of the one-two punch of the American world tariffs assault and China's unexpectedly resilient response, which made it unbearable for Trump's Republican oligarch backers to support, as Musk's panic illustrated. Trump and his lackeys like Navarro and Miran may have a chef's kiss plan all sketched out of restoring American manufacturing, but their great sorrow is that they and their perfect plan exist in the mud and dirt of reality, Hegelian idealism faceplanting into the material conditions of the real world. American leadership simply does not have the capacity to tell its oligarchic and financial backers to "shut up" and "bear the pain for the greater good" in the same way that China did during the first term trade war. This "pause" shores up the market from a state of total doom and gloom, which relaxes some of the political pressure on Trump.

I don't really have an opinion on whether the "pause" was a pump-and-dump market manipulation (it totally was) because regardless of the intentionality, it has wider consequences. In that way, it wouldn't be wrong to say that the Chinese response put Trump into a Catch-22. Retaining tariffs on the rest of the world to follow through with their grand plan would be politically untenable through the mounting financial damage to their financial backers, which is the ultimate limiting factor curtailing any US executive action. The US made itself into a capitalist oligarchy and it is forced to lie in the same bed it made through McCarthyist repression. Reducing and pausing tariffs on the rest of the world, as he has now chosen, would provide an avenue to retaliate and take revenge against China, but undermines his original strategic goal.

The point, as Trump's team revealed after people mocked them for tariffing random Pacific islands, was to exact a cost on manufacturers so long as they stay out of the US, no matter where else they set up. This was done to incentivize the profit-seeking calculus of manufacturing companies to determine that it was worth it to come to the US rather than anywhere else. Additionally, and more importantly, this was meant to combat China's manufacturing outsourcing strategy of "Made Abroad with Chinese Characteristics" where Chinese manufacturers went overseas to set up intermediaries in locations like Vietnam (which is why that country received among the highest tariffs), which effectively negated the entire point of the US trade war on China, which was to weaken the Chinese manufacturing sector.

I believe that Trump genuinely sought to "make a deal" with China, particularly in line with the Phase One trade agreement that he briefly secured before the onset of COVID-19 and his electoral defeat in 2020 derailed any lasting progress. Historically, the West's successes against China have often involved signing unequal treaties, which leveraged the centralizing strength of the Chinese state to enforce Western terms on China and its people. Whether Trump anticipated China's response or was genuinely surprised by it, the "pause" he was ultimately forced to concede—at the detriment to his re-shoring strategy—demonstrates the impact of China's reaction.

In any case, the US's focus is once again squarely on China, but this just represents a continuation of the Trump I trade war, a more familiar ground compared to the scenario of the global trade conflict, now put on hold. While China will suffer from this renewed US assault, its experience from the first trade war suggests it is better equipped to weather such pressures. The previous trade war allowed China to consolidate domestic capital around its self-sufficiency goals, making it more resilient. In contrast, the rest of the world, as seen during Biden's term, lacks defenses against US economic and political aggression. Trump can boast about other countries coming up to "kiss his ass," but those nations like Vietnam do so out of a lack of options.

During Biden, China largely took a passive stance, as the US lashed out indiscriminately at multiple targets. To be frank, I'd say that it would have been politically untenable, for the Chinese leadership to have voluntarily stepped forward to faceslap Genocide Joe and draw his attention towards them at that time. Now, however, the Chinese government has a compelling rationale for positioning itself as a shield to redirect American hostility away from the rest of the world and focusing it squarely on China - simply because it's been made a fait accompli through Trump's actions. Since this is what happened during Trump I, at least all the way until the one month prelude in 2020 before the beginning of the pandemic when the US assassinated Soleimani, an intensification against China can be expected to allow the rest of the world, the Global South in particular, some breathing room. This would be a disaster if China is weakened as a result, but the experience accrued from a near-decade of trade war means that China is better positioned than in any time ever and the speed of the Chinese response this time around suggests that the Chinese government knows it.