The Great Trump Riddle on China

No one knows what the US President's desired endgame with Beijing really is.

- Edward Luce

Smart money says that US President Donald Trump's upside is that you know where he stands. That may be true on his love of grift and loathing of immigrants and trade deficits. When it comes to Mr. Trump and China, however, economists should drop their caveat about "all things being equal."

Nothing to do with Mr. Trump's China policy is predictable, let alone equal. Does he care about Taiwan? Let's toss a coin. Does he want the US to decouple from China? Spin the roulette wheel. Mr. Trump's supposed coming phone call with China's President Xi Jinping is unlikely to lift our confusion. China is the ultimate Trump riddle.

You can hardly blame the Chinese for being wary of talking to him. In late April, Mr. Trump told Time that Mr. Xi had called him -- "and I don't think that's a sign of weakness on his behalf." No call had taken place.

Any reading by Mr. Trump of Mr. Xi's psychology should thus be put down to an artificial intelligence-style hallucination. China's Foreign Ministry accused Mr. Trump of "misleading the public," which by today's standards was polite. But we should not mistake Mr. Xi's avoidance of "wolf warrior" invective for submission to Mr. Trump in the tariffs war. China is not the UK. The Chinese are as confused about Mr. Trump's endgame as everyone else.