Overnight the Dow recovered more than half of Wednesday's loss on news that China was prepared to offer a partial deal which involves an increase in purchases of US soybeans and agriproducts. Despite being unhappy about the blacklisting of Chinese companies and visa restrictions thrown at them, China's pragmatism led them to demonstrate that they want to resolve this trade issue - this early show of hands however could be interpreted by POTUS as weakness in negotiation and reaffirms his view that China is a 'disaster'and wants to do a deal badly. They do, but unfortunately not on his terms in relation to IPs, tech access and subsidies. Trump can walk away with this small win and close the chapter . But on probability, he won't, now that he has the upper hand- his art of the deal negotiation suggests that one does not walk away with a small win when you have the upper hand - Negotiation 101, and if he does , it means he is desperate to get a quick win for himself in the face of his impeachment troubles.
So what is likely tonight or Friday is that he will take the soybean small win , declare that as a small win and in return defer the Oct 15 additional tariffs to a later date subject to progress of subsequent and progressive negotiations on the major issues that US wants. And China , despite their objection to those major issues, could lead them on to buy more time with the hope that the impeachment would take POTUS out of office. This would still be a win for Trump and a win for the stock market (a kneejerk positive) but will probably go down as an anti-climax.
That said, it is unlikely that POTUS would agree to unwind back the tariffs that have already been imposed in the absence of a major deal. And the trade war is no closer to getting resolved [because it would be a major backdown if POTUS were to accept just a small concession from China and it would be a major humiliation for Xi if China were to submit to perceived US bullying].
In a way, the US administration's demands mirror the HK democracy movement in that what started as smaller demands morphed into something larger as they felt they began to have a stronger hand, but in doing so they led themselves into a situation where resolution becomes near impossible [ would you expect China to accede to both giving HK autonomy to elect their own leaders and accede to US demands to change their behaviour ? Even if China were to do that, it would do so on their own accord at the time of their choosing, not through coercion from external pressures ].
But we can only postulate and can't be sure about anything in today's world, led by the most inconsistent world leader in modern history and possibly mankind.
