'Game of Chicken' in Which Trump is First to Veer

Hard line meets reality on tariffs, china and the fed chief

Author

Matt Davis
April 25, 2025

Hellooooo. I’m glad it’s Friday, aren’t you? This morning’s front page leads with a critical piece of analysis by reporter David E. Sanger saying Trump has lost in a few games of chicken. There’s also a horrific photo on the right from Kyiv, showing the deadliest Russian assault on the Ukrainian capital in over a year. Funny, because Ukraine is another “chicken” issue for Trump. But not funny. Not at all funny, in fact.

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This story really is an education in the political risk of striking a “hard line.”

After weeks of bluster and escalation, President Trump blinked. Then he blinked again. And again.

He backed off his threat to fire the Federal Reserve chairman. His Treasury secretary, acutely aware that the S&P 500 was down 10 percent since Mr. Trump was inaugurated, signaled he was looking for an offramp to avoid an intensifying trade war with China.

And now Mr. Trump has acknowledged that the 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods that he announced just two weeks ago are not sustainable. He was prompted in part by the warnings of senior executives from Target and Walmart and other large American retailers that consumers would see price surges and empty shelves for some imported goods within a few weeks.

Mr. Trump’s “encounter with reality” is vividly described. The “world of modern supply chains is far more complex than he bargained for.” His “beautiful” tariffs won’t have the predicted effects.

This is as hard as the New York Times goes towards saying “it sucks to be Trump.”

Mr. Sanger also reports on the White House’s inevitable spinning of the various U-turns. His “maximalist demands,” they say, have been “an act of strategic brilliance, forcing 90 countries to line up to deal with the president.”

But here’s a simple expression of what really happened.

Ya burnnnt

Mr. Trump himself insisted to reporters at the White House that everything was going according to plan, Mr. Sanger reports.

“We have a lot of action going on,” he said, repeating his now-familiar line that “we’re not going to be a laughingstock that got taken advantage of by virtually every country in the world.” He suggested again that the United States needed to return to the halcyon era from 1870 to 1913 — the year the country began to impose income taxes — when tariffs funded the government and “we had more money than anybody.”

And he repeated his prediction that “now we’re going to be making money with everyone, and everyone’s going to be happy.”

But happy did not seem to be the vibe around the White House in recent days.


Is it just me or is Mr. Sanger really enjoying this?

Mr. Trump hugely drew back on his pressure to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell after markets took a dive. Then “the next walk-back came with China.”

The White House kept hinting that the Chinese were beginning to negotiate, seeking a way to end the tariffs. In fact, the strategy that Beijing appeared to be following was to wait for Mr. Trump to feel the pain of his own actions. The expected phone call from President Xi Jinping never came. And Mr. Trump didn’t want to be the first to call, either — a sign of desperation.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent then made comments in a “closed-door” meeting saying the U.S. was looking to deescalate with China.

“No one thinks the current status quo is sustainable” at those tariff rates, Mr. Bessent told investors at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday in Washington, where his comments immediately leaked.

It’s remarkable that a meeting with investors would lead to comments leaking, isn’t it? Almost as if the White House knew its audience would do its bidding, and chose this channel to do its climbdown. By late Tuesday, Trump was publicly mulling lowering the tariffs against China, having miscalculated about China’s response. This all weakens America on the global stage.

Other powers are clearly watching the Chinese approach and taking notes. Mr. Xi’s closest ally, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is engaged in his own high-stakes negotiation with the United States, over Ukraine. Iran is in the midst of talks about its nuclear program. They are looking for signs of weakness, or little indications of what could test Mr. Trump’s nerves.

Perhaps Russia and Iran should just send a porn star over here and run a stitch-up?

The article closes with a quote from the incredibly-named Elizabeth Economy.

Seriously. My new name is Matthew Business. She told the Times the Trump team “appeared to have ignored three fundamentals about China: the depth of the Chinese retaliatory tool kit, the extent of China’s economic leverage over the United States, and the ability of Mr. Xi to make the United States the scapegoat for China’s economic ills.”

“This game of chicken has done nothing but enable Xi Jinping to boost his standing in and outside China, while the United States appears uninformed and unmoored,” she said.

Again I hate to sound too delighted but the front page of the New York Times today basically said Donald Trump messed up on the Fed Chair, Chinese tariffs, and is about to mess up on Ukraine and Iran in ways that materially weaken America’s position on the global stage. This isn’t America First. It’s America F___ed. And yet the majority of Americans voted for it because 1. they’re angry and racist; 2. they didn’t like paying a bit more for eggs and 3. they really hated Kamala Harris.

My favorite thing I saw yesterday was this, after the Trump team started selling “Trump 2028” hats for $50 online.

Say, is there a story on the front page that might cheer me up a bit?

Oh, sure. Read 👇🏻 about how the lower level of Penn Station has become the people’s dance studio. But definitely don’t read the 2021 article about how the architect killed himself. Mkay? I like to think he’d be proud of this particular legacy, at least.

Penn Station’s Not-So-Secret Other Life: The People’s Dance Studio

Smooth floors. Public restrooms. A built-in audience: The lower level of Moynihan Hall doubles as a rehearsal space for a variety of dance groups, including K-pop, salsa and Brazilian Zouk.

And thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

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