At a summit meant to showcase President Trump’s economic policies as a model for the world, Europeans complained about tariffs and the war with Iran.
Page F1From§Eachthe milkman edition — 2 September 2026
Treasury accuses China of flooding markets with cheap exports as allies push back on Trump's economic approach.
As it ran on the front
I ran the numbers from the G20 the same way I'd run a set of books that don't quite balance. On one side of the ledger, Treasury Secretary Bessent stood up and said China is flooding the world with cheap exports, undercutting other manufacturers, distorting the market. That's one column, and it's not wrong, hon — the export figures back it up.
On the other side of the ledger, at the same summit, some of the same U.S. allies Washington is counting on to help contain China spent their time pushing back on the Trump administration's own economic approach — the tariffs, the reciprocal duties, the whole framework. Two columns, one meeting, and they don't reconcile.…
…(cont) Here's what I mean by that, precisely. If the complaint against China is that one country's trade policy is distorting outcomes for everyone else, that complaint doesn't stop being true just because the country doing the distorting changes. An ally pushing back on a tariff schedule isn't picking China's side. They're filing the same complaint against a different set of initials.
I checked whether the allies pushing back were the same governments the administration is asking to help isolate Chinese exports. They were. That's not a contradiction in the sense of a lie — nobody's records show anyone said something false. It's a contradiction in the sense that the filing cabinet has two folders open at once, both correct, both about trade distortion, and they're both about us.
So when the export numbers come back showing where the cheap goods actually went, and when the tariff receipts come back showing where the higher prices actually landed, I'd want those run against each other before anyone signs the summary page. Because right now the accusation and the pushback are sitting in the same folder, filed under the same complaint, about two different senders. The gap doesn't close itself, hon. It just moves down the line to whoever's buying the imports, or paying the tariff, at the register next week.
“They stand up at the G20 and call China's exports a threat to the market — then their own allies stand up at the same meeting and call Trump's tariffs a threat to the market. Nobody's wrong, that's the tell: it's not a trade war, it's a protection racket with two different guys collecting.”
“Our allies aren't undermining the China strategy, they're just expressing legitimate concerns about implementation — which, to be fair, is what China says about our sanctions too. That's not the comparison I wanted to make. The tariffs are working. Ask me again after the next G20.”
The receipts
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused China for flooding the world with its cheap exports.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.