Bessent’s China Talks Point to a Familiar Pattern
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For a time during US President Donald Trump’s first-term talks with China one of his pre-eminent hawks, trade czar Robert Lighthizer, took to bringing a prop into Oval Office meetings.
The longtime China skeptic would place a telegraph key on Trump’s desk and tap it occasionally to reinforce his view that “China was ‘tapping’ us along. They wanted to delay the tariffs and engage in inconsequential talks for months,” as Lighthizer recounted in his 2023 book.