Keith Bradsher

That's a risky position to be in when you're a country like China that lives on exports, even as the domestic economy is a mess.

So China may have overplayed its hand.

It's possible the US has overplayed its hand, but the US is in a very difficult position because China has enormous overcapacity of factories.

And just last Thursday, we had a pivotal moment.

The Central Committee of the entire Communist Party said, we're going to double down on manufacturing.

We want to be the country that makes everything.

And that is a direct challenge to the United States and Europe, which still have some manufacturing sectors, and to Japan and to South Korea.

This emphasis on making practically all kinds of advanced technology is really a worry.

And so the United States is on the spot now.

Does it take a short-term strategy of accepting a deal that gets it back to where it was at the start of the year?

but risks further deterioration of what's left of the American manufacturing sector?

Or does it continue to have a confrontation, but that could be very painful?

The U.S.

was not in a good position to begin with.

And the Biden administration had struggled with the same issue previously.

The Biden strategy was to proceed cautiously and avoid an outright confrontation, unlike Trump.

But the Biden administration also had the weakness of not really slowing down China's remarkable race towards dominance of an extremely wide range of manufacturing industries.

And so the Trump administration felt a need to go considerably farther.

And that has now triggered an outsized response from Beijing.

That's exactly right, Natalie.