Engineer
Major
He is right in saying "that's the simplest way of looking at it."
Trump's policies on China are pretty much the same as those of Biden's, centered around reversing China's influence in the world. The difference is that Biden went about it passively aggressively, while Trump uses direct threats. This difference is just a reflection of how the Democrats and Republicans operate, instead of personality that most people are framing it to be.
The US regime knows it can't take on China alone in a trade war. This has been tried and failed. China is just too big and already too diversified from US's market. However, while China can cease trading with the US, China can't cease trading with the rest of the world. Using the enormous tariffs as leverages, the US regime could force the rest of the world to negotiate to terms favorable to the US.
The best outcome for the US regime would be for countries around the world cancelling their existing trade deals with China in return for US to rescind the tariffs. People may retort by saying no country would sacrifice their self interests like that, but a similar arrangement has already been done by Biden on Europe. Europe was forced to stop Russian gas import, eat the economic loss, and now bankroll the Ukraine war.
The worse outcome would be for US regime to destroy the existing international trade, following the motto "if US isn't profiting from this then no one can." While US would hurt, they would still see it as a win as long as the rest of the world hurts more. Throw in a bit of state-sponsor piracy and the rest of the world won't even be able to trade among themselves.
Reality doesn't matter to them. They made a decision and needed b.s. justification. Same thing with putting tariffs on uninhabited islands, which is immaterial in the end.
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