Trump has asked his lackeys to achieve the impossible in trade negotiations with China and, not surprisingly, he is disappointed that they haven't achieved it yet.
Trump grew angry on Friday when his hand-picked trade representative Robert Lighthizer said any trade "deal" they reach with China will probably take the form of a non-binding memorandum of understanding, but Trump's displeasure with Lighthizer has been building for months according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg.
I'm sure it will also not surprise you to learn that Trump blames Lighthizer for the various dumpster fires he has personally lit.
Trump’s disappointment with his trade czar has built in recent months, according to people close to the administration, fueled by the stock market’s precipitous drop in late 2018 as the trade war with China escalated. U.S. stocks logged their worst December performance since the Great Depression, and had their biggest annual decline since 2008. [...]
For his part, Lighthizer, 71, who’s spent years arguing for a tougher trade stand against China, has been growing irritated with Trump’s interventions, according to people familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations.
As you probably recall, Trump kicked off the market's decline in December when he revealed that his villainous alter-ego is "Tariff Man."
Now, Trump's dysfunctional relationship with other humans and his habit of blaming others for his own mistakes is nothing new, but there are several things we can take away from what happened last week.
If a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) is as far as they've come, I believe that tells us there's still a great deal of distance between Trump's demands and what China is willing to concede.
Trump's displeasure with MOUs could also be an indication that he will not sign off on whatever Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin have managed to negotiate if all it amounts to is an agreement on the meaning of words.