Not So Easy: Trump's Trade Agenda Hits Stumbling Blocks

President Donald Trump’s hard-line views on trade, a staple of his message long before he entered politics, are beginning to collide with the cold realities of global geopolitics.

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Trade talks on China and the North American Free Trade Agreement have hit stumbling blocks, posing a challenge for a president who vowed to make trade deals more equitable for the United States during his 2016 campaign and who famously tweeted that trade wars are “easy to win.”

Trump’s trade agenda — at least lately — has not been so easy.

Trump’s administration announced plans Tuesday to slap $50 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese technology while taking steps to impose new investment restrictions and export controls, aimed at pushing China to remove trade barriers that make it difficult for U.S. companies to do business in China.

The new action came after the administration said earlier this month that it had suspended plans to impose $150 billion in tariffs for now and the president tweeted last week that a “different structure” would be needed in the trade talks involving the world’s two largest economies.

The president has bemoaned the massive U.S. trade deficit with China — $337 billion last year — as evidence that Beijing has been complicit in abusive trading practices and outsmarted his predecessors.ng to a pause in the trade dispute, the administration had pointed to China’s plans to “significantly increase” its purchases of U.S. goods and services and make “meaningful increases” in U.S. exports of agriculture and energy products. Financial markets, wary of a calamitous trade war, were relieved.