Speaking of masks...

At the wonderful Conservative Treehouse blog, Sundance does another fabulous job explaining U.S. vs. Communist China trade wars.

The potential tariffs (25 percent on $300+ billion in goods) sit on the table as a weapon President Trump would love to start using. However, in the dance with the dragon Lighthizer and Ross have to wait for the panda mask to fully drop. Currently Chairman Xi Jinping is trying to keep the financial/investment class from noticing the panda mask is slipping. However, that ruse can’t last too much longer. Thus the dance continues.

At the 30,000/ft level China appears to have accepted that President Trump isn’t going to concede an inch. Therefore their position in the trade stand-off is timed to exhaust around the 2020 presidential election. Despite what the U.S. media are claiming, Beijing is making very visible moves to withstand more than a year of status quo strain.

All of the heavily pushed media narratives today surrounding Liu He statements are simply Wall Street multinationals, through their media allies, trying to fend off the confrontation between the U.S. and China. There are trillions at stake.

This is a battle between the U.S. and China, but also between U.S. multinationals who are financially positioned/vested on the side of Beijing. The U.S. Wall Street multinationals are trying to protect their Chinese investments by pushing a narrative that China is open to honest and fair negotiations; they are not.

Read more here.