I keep wondering if it's a thing where Trump is expecting China to blink and he keeps raising the stakes, thinking he'll get them to bend the knee, not realizing that they can take it a lot more than the US can. I know there are other theories floating around that have a real strategy behind them, like decoupling from China to do a hot war or to re-industrialize or something, but I don't know, even if strategic, it all seems pretty apple pie in the sky from the US's end. It comes across to me like the actions of an entity that feels cornered, with the attitudes of an entity that is used to being king, that has yet to come to terms with its decline.

I don't want to have unfounded optimism about it. I imagine the US can still do a lot of damage militarily across the world, at least in the short term. But the "soft power" part seems to be going increasingly in the shredder.