The revaluation strategy backed by the threat of tariffs has already failed spectacularly. In my view, the decisive reason was that the Trump administration folded first in its trade war with Beijing, with American stores at one point essentially running out of goods. As a Beijing policy advisor told me a year ago, “We missed the best chance to shift China toward a more consumption-oriented growth model because the US proved too weak (怂).” Now that China has successfully weathered what was arguably the most aggressive trade war with the US—and its trade surplus continues to surge— I see little reason to believe that tariff threats can force Beijing to rebalance its economy. If anything, the experience may have reinforced the opposite lesson in Beijing: the US lacks the leverage to force China to change its economic model.