Andrew Ross Sorkin

I'm of the view that ultimately,

I don't know if it's the taco trade or whatever they call it these days, which is Trump always chickens out.

Yeah.

Ultimately, I think he's trying to push it as far as he can push it.

But the truth and maybe it's the only governor thus far, actually, on this presidency has actually been the markets, weirdly enough.

Right.

So when he announced the tariffs back in April, the sort of big shooting the moon plan, the bond market went crazy and he softened his stance.

You know, here we are again.

He's trying to figure out what to do with China.

He softens his stance.

And they're the only people he seems to be willing to listen to.

The through line in my reporting about Trump is simply leverage.

It's how can he get leverage over somebody else?

It's not about – and the relationship is always going to be transactional.

He would argue to you, I think, if we were sitting at this table with the president, that all of these quote-unquote relationships, these friendships, these special relationships we've had with European countries was never really a relationship at all.

He would say we were actually paying them all off to be our friends, frankly, and that that was our leverage.

if we had any leverage with them.

And I think now he's saying we have leverage in a different way, which is that we're basically going to tariff them.

My only point is that I think what he's looking at are the numbers, not that anybody's doing anything in a kumbaya way for the United States, nor that the United States should be doing kumbaya way things for them.

And we will see whether we really have leverage or not.