- This was a provocative move
- There was substantial communication over the weekend
- There will be lots of staff level meetings
- China is neither going to command or control us
- We have already been in touch with allies, meeting them this week
- Expect support from India and other countries
- Believes that China is open to discussions on this matter
- If not, we have substantial levers we can pull
- We could move more aggressively than how China has
- We don't want to decouple but China is sending a decoupling message
- Everything's on the table, but confident that this can be de-escalated
- Trump still on track to meet with Xi in South Korea
The first few remarks sounded like he was trying to cool the rhetoric a little. However, the part on going "more aggressively" might be something to temper some of the optimism to start the week. It still sounds like both sides are still quite some ways of from pressing the pause button again though. But hey, at least there's still time. We're roughly three weeks away from the 1 November deadline.
