Who will win the trade war?
Trump must be loving the relative plight of China. This is his opportunity to extract concessions. More concessions.
The poor China data comes amid months of intense negotiations between Washington and Beijing aimed at ending their trade dispute. Last week, the US reported its goods trade deficit with China surged to an all-time high last year, underlining one of the key sticking points in the talks.
China's data, however, showed its surplus with the United States narrowed to $14.72 billion in February from $27.3 billion in January, and it has promised to buy more U.S. goods such as agricultural products as part of the trade discussions.
Trump said that trade talks were moving along well and predicted either a "good deal" or no deal between the world's two largest economies. Trump postponed a sharp US tariff hike slated for early March as the talks progressed, but both Washington and Beijing have kept previous duties in place. At the same time, global demand has been weakening, particularly in Europe.
