Forbes (20/02/2019) - China will survive and grow and become an Asian powerhouse. So don’t worry corporate America and global money managers: China is not going to roll over. But that’s the problem. China is not going to roll over and give up providing certain subsidies to state-owned firms, large and small. China is not going to make its new intellectual property laws retroactive so American companies can litigate day in and day out for past harms.

Why does Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin want guarantees from China that it wont purposefully weaken the yuan? Because tariffs are going up next month, and Mnuchin doesn’t want them to be negated by China widening its forex trading ban and bringing the yuan to 7 and change against the dollar. Or weaker.

On the China trade war, resistance is futile.

If there is one big-picture campaign item that President Trump might actually succeed at fully it is passing on the China tariffs to the next government. Only a laissez-faire, free-market Democrat would take them down should Trump not get reelected in 2020.

The bottom line is that the trade dispute—as China likes to call it—is evolving into a bipartisan platform that involves key Democratic Party members like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. Wall Street will have to get used to a low-intensity trade war and pick their winners and losers accordingly. This will all go down in the second and third quarter as Trump is expected to extend the 90-day trade truce out another 60 days. There is a chance that tariffs will remain in place and not rise until after extension, barring some sort of "Come to Jesus" moment in the Trump administration.

Read more at https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/02/20/china-trade-war-update-resistance-is-futile/#4a2a813be9c7