Its looking more and more like Trump's tariffs are a misfire....

Its looking more and more like Trump's tariffs are a misfire. China isn't responding the way that Trump thought - they aren't coming kissing his arse and begging for a deal, and major American retailers like Walmart and Lowe's have told him that there will be empty shelves in three weeks if he doesn't back down on the tariffs. Trump mightn't be a macro-economic genius but one thing he does understand is polls and elections - and he knows that in less than two years the U.S. has mid-term elections so he has to keep the public on side or else he risks a total wipeout for the Republicans at the midterms - so he can't afford to inconvenience the voting public by having empty shelves at major retailers due to him kicking an own goal.

At the same time Trump needs to get China's recently imposed ban on the export of critical minerals/rare earths reversed - or else the U.S. can't make F35 fighter jets, and his buddy Elon won't be able to make his Tesla's

I heard an interesting detail the other day. 97% of baby strollers sold in the U.S. come from China - his 145% tariffs on Chinese imports would effectively about double the retail price of these, which could lead to importers not having the free cash available to import and hold in stock as many as they did, which would then unbalance supply vs demand and lead to a supply shortage which would push prices up further, and if this is repeated across other products then the U.S. will enter runaway inflation, and the Fed will be forced to raise interest rates instead of lowering them like Trump is advocating for.

The other problem that could manifest itself is like what happened in Egypt a few years ago - importers won't be able to afford to pay the tariffs on the goods that they have already ordered and paid for from China so their goods will be left sitting in containers on the docks and the docks will start running out of space.