US president Donald Trump’s cautious approach to China in the first weeks of his second presidency has provoked much speculation. Certain predictions now seem quite prescient. Bloomberg’s Anna Wong, for example, forecast late last year that Trump would quickly accuse China of not honoring the deal it signed with his first administration to end the trade war.

Trump, she suggested, would then impose small additional tariffs on a range of consumer products imported from China, to provoke either a ramped-up decoupling or further trade negotiations. How China would react to such moves, though, was unclear.

The recent book On Xi Jinping is designed to make predicting China’s responses easier. Its author, Kevin Rudd, former Australian prime minister and one-time Jacobin contributor, was present at the signing ceremony that marked the official end of the trade war in 2020. He claims to have been invited by both the Trump administration and the Chinese government. The goodwill, however, hasn’t lasted. Trump loyalists are running a campaign to oust Rudd from his current role as Australian ambassador to the United States, for comments branding Trump “a village idiot.”