According to President Trump, famed investor and business leader Charles Schwab told him that “he's been waiting for 40 years for somebody to do what I did over the last month” — meaning his attempt to rebalance unfair trading practices, especially with China.

Schwab is not the only one to think this way.

Sifting through all the stops and starts (and at times contradictory rhetoric from the White House about tariffs), one thing is clear: Trump is determined to penalize China for its long history of cheating the U.S. As of last evening, the president had imposed unprecedented tariffs of 145 percent on China, even as he has given most other nations a 90-day reprieve from the “reciprocal tariffs” announced last week. He says he is singling out Beijing for what he called a “lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets.”

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It is equally clear that Chinese President Xi Jinping is not ready to bend the knee. Trump may have been angered by Xi’s announcement that his country would hit U.S. imports with 84 percent duties, but our president has long believed that China should pay for decades of trade transgressions

China is virtually the only country retaliating against the U.S. and refusing any resolution of the tit-for-tat tariffs. Though many are

© The Hill