Once again, President Donald Trump gave a lot away without getting anything commensurate in return. Call it the "Art of the Deal for Losers."
Experts are slamming Trump's complete surrender to Chinese president Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Osaka where he agreed to delay the 25 percent tariffs he continuously threatened to levy while allowing U.S. firms to once again do business with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.
What is infuriating, say, experts, is Trump got nothing as substantial in return from Xi. In exchange for these lofty concessions, Trump only received a promise China will buy American farm products, which China had already done in the past.
On June 30, Trump tweeted "China has agreed that, during the negotiation, they will begin purchasing large amounts of agricultural product from our great Farmers" but without giving any details.
While he held off on the new 25 percent tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese exports to the U.S., Trump also said: "There will be no reduction in the Tariffs currently being charged to China."
Trump's "negotiating" tactics and lack of success immediately came under fire.
"It is looking like, so far, China is coming out as a winner from this G20," said Francesco Filia, CEO, and CIO at asset management firm Fasanara Capital, to CNBC on Monday.
"It's not even clear what they (China) gave up in order to get it," he said.
Filia noted, as did many other experts, there was a lack of details about what the two leaders agreed to at the meeting. Both sides have since refused to issue statements clarifying whatever deal -- if any -- was made at Osaka.
Trump's sudden about-face as regards his threat of 25 percent tariffs was "one of the most concerning outcomes at the G20," according to Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO of research firm Quill Intelligence.
"It looks as if he obviously gave a lot of ground back to China," she said Wednesday.
Eric Robertsen, head of a global macro strategy and FX research at Standard Chartered Bank, said there wasn't much "meaningful or tangible" outcome from that meeting between Xi and Trump.
Observers pointed out Trump adopted the same puzzling tactic of unilateral concessions with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un before their first face-to-face summit in Bangkok on June 12, 2018. Trump ordered a unilateral halt to U.S.-South Korean military exercises to appease Kim and not endanger his budding denuclearization talks. Trump demanded nothing reciprocal from Kim.
As of today, U.S.-South Korean military exercises remain suspended while North Korea goes ahead with its own war games. Worse, the denuclearization talks have failed to produce anything of significance except statements from Trump flattering Kim.
