Additionally in my comment you quoted above from a year ago, I was talking about other countries that would join that war against China. But Trump went ahead and made the stupidest mistake by waging an economic war against almost the entire world which meant other countries that might have joined in US campaign not only didn't join that side, but instead they joined the Chinese side.
We even saw something nobody would have believed when Japan and South Korea got closer to China!!! Even Europe is getting closer to China and overall US is being isolated...
This is the main reason Trump paused the tariff hike bullshit, to take some time and buy back the loyalty of those he is loosing already as allies. Forget about the big talks he makes about the other countries calling and begging for a negotiation, He is the one doing that. I know China is a country that never wants to loose face and would do anything to uphold their integrity, they immediately started looking for other consumer markets in other countries and started having trade agreements with them including the unimaginable Japan and South Korea. When Trump saw that he was loosing the war, he immediately relaxed the tariff hike out of fear of China getting more trade advantage than the US.
China even went on to have Bilateral trade engagements with Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia. Last month The China president made a visit to these countries and already planned signing about 40 agreements with Vietnam alone which cuts across infrastructure and security cooperation. Trump was already seeing that the odds were against him and played smart to relax the tariff escalations on other countries but China.
We await the result from their talks this weekend. Meanwhile Trump has suggested the tariffs could be lowered. Let's watch the Trump drama and see where next it leads to.