Yesterday, Xi Tells CEOs He’ll Strike Back at U.S. https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-tells-ceos-hell-strik....

However, one can deduce that the dictator is running scared. The stock market has fallen 25% this year. Yuan has fallen 10%. There's a 400 billion tariff coming his way, and because of 'saving face', there's no way he will back down. He has to prop up the real estate bubble:

"price rose 31 percent to nearly $202 per square foot. That's 38 percent higher than the median price per square foot in the U.S., where per-capita income is more than 700 percent higher than in China." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-china...

and he has to also unwind China's 12-18T shadow banking, China's version of subprime loans similar to 2008 crisis (but way bigger). He has to figure out how to steal IP to move up the chain when US and the rest of the world has upped their defense, restricting Chinese tech investments and resisting hacking attempts. He also needs to deal with the tariffs encouraging manufacturers to leave China and go to southeast asia or back home via reshoring or automation. There is also the matter of a lack of consumer market in China, after it gets shut out of US and europe. Not much Chinese consumers can buy after $800/month income, after paying most of it to mortgage and inflated food prices.

One of the few policies of the current administration that I support has been its efforts with China trade and maybe North Korea. It is not healthy for the world to have an emerging world power that regularly abuses human rights and seeks true totalitarianism through electronic surveillance.

I'm not really sure the current administration is doing it for the human rights reasons you noted. I'm not sure they care much about that either way.

I think they could get what they want out of these deals and human rights would remain the same or worse and they wouldn't care.

Sorry for that unintended interpretation. I don't think that this administration gives a shit about human rights.

What is here to know what the actual leadership of America thinks or doesn't think?

Tweets, which people seem to find horrific, but they do seem to come directly from leadership.

Or at least they seem on point when it comes to the administrations actions.

I've come to the conclusion that those are cover fire for distracting attention, or maybe just for staying in the news ("any news is good news"...). The press gets outraged over the tweets (justifiably so), but the point of them is to get people outraged. I'm not convinced they reflect anything Trump will actually do.

That would make sense if his tweets weren't consistent with what is known and observed about Trump's personality, and if some of his tweets didn't do more harm than good to his own administration, party and agenda. And he doesn't need to make an effort to stay in the news - he's the President, so the news will cover him no matter what.

Honestly, I think he's just a troll, nothing more complex than that. They don't represent what Trump will actually do but I'm certain they do represent what he thinks, and what he wants to do.

Every time I try to think about Trump he seems profoundly stupid but also profoundly clever at the same time.

He comes across as somewhere between 4chan/pol and Forest Gump. And I'm not being critical, by the way. It is, upon reflection, profoundly clever.