US and China hurtling towards total breakdown of ties

The TOI correspondent from Washington: The United States and China are barreling towards a complete breakdown of bilateral ties as the tit-for-tat tariff war escalated on Friday.
Beijing increased levies on American imports to 125 percent in response to Washington hiking taxes on Chinese imports to 145 per cent, virtually decimating the $600 billion annual trade between them.
Beyond that, MAGA hardliners are pressing for steps that will destroy ties. Among them: delisting Chinese companies from US stock exchanges, confiscating Chinese assets in America, and denying and even revoking visas for 300,000 Chinese students in the US, as part of a full-scale economic war to bring a defiant Beijing to its knees.
Alleging that Chinese students are spying on America, one US lawmaker has proposed legislative action to end student visas for Chinese nationals. “The STOP CCP Visas Act will protect Americans and prevent these individuals from helping China with intelligence gathering,” Florida Senator Ashley Moody said on Friday.
MAGA hardliners who have been gunning for student and work visas for foreign nationals are doubling down to put pressure on the White House. “I understand @realDonaldTrump is not for this. But with what’s going on with the Chinese gov, it’s better to revoke all 350K student visas now, get them on a plane, and let American students take those billets,” said Steve Bannon, a former Trump aide and surrogate.
Effectively, Chinese in MAGA eyes are the new Japanese, some 100,000 of whom were corralled into internment camps during World War II under the Alien Enemies Act that Trump has invoked to target illegal immigration.
The growing resentment against China in MAGA circles comes even as Beijing took a defiant stance against the Trump tariff gambit and tried to enlist the support of EU, ASEAN, India and other groups and nations against the US.
Meanwhile, the White House, which earlier said it was in talks with 70 countries to resolve trade deficit issues, said 15 countries have reached out to the US with trade plans without identifying the countries.
But outside the MAGAsphere, which believes everything is hunky-dory, most economic experts are saying President Trump may have overplayed his hand, and while both China and the US will be damaged by the trade war, resolution depends on which country has greater resilience to endure the pain.
Trump himself tried to gee up Americans amid widespread criticism from many quarters, save MAGA faithful who believe in the President’s promise of manufacturing manna and economic revival despite dire prognosis from business leaders about the tariff fallout.
“We are doing really well on our TARIFF POLICY. Very exciting for America, and the World!!! It is moving along quickly,” Trump posted on his social media platform first thing Friday morning.
This followed withering criticism of his approach from many US analysts who say his toxic taunts and threats to many countries, including neighboring Canada and Mexico, had turned off the international community and diminished confidence and trust in America that is reflected in weakening US market. Some experts believe a few countries are starting to disengage from the US.
The rise in long-term bond yields and drop in the dollar may show investors turning away from the US as the best place to invest, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, a Kashmiri-American who is a former assistant secretary of treasury, said on Friday.
“Normally, when you see big tariff increases, I would have expected the dollar to go up. The fact that the dollar is going down at the same time, I think, lends some more credibility to the story of investor preferences shifting,” Kashkari told CNBC.
Many business leaders, who have been tip-toeing around Trump’s tariff gamble because they are afraid of a backlash, are starting to speak out. Laurence Fink, chief executive of the investment firm Blackrock, bluntly told the network that in the wake of the push for tariffs, the US had become “the global destabilizer” — a big shift from the role the it has played as a “global stabilizer” since the end of World War II.