After weeks of bluster and escalation, President Trump blinked. Then he blinked again. And again.

经过数周的咆哮威吓和局势升级，特朗普总统退缩了。接着他又退缩了一次。然后又一次。

He backed off his threat to fire the Federal Reserve chairman. His Treasury secretary, acutely aware that the S&P 500 was down 10 percent since Mr. Trump was inaugurated, signaled he was looking for an offramp to avoid an intensifying trade war with China.

他收回了解雇美联储主席的威胁。他的财政部长很清楚标准普尔500指数自特朗普就职以来已经下跌了10%，于是暗示他正在寻找一条出路，以避免与中国不断升级的贸易战。

And now Mr. Trump has acknowledged that the 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods that he announced just two weeks ago are not sustainable. He was prompted in part by the warnings of senior executives from Target and Walmart and other large American retailers that consumers would see price surges and empty shelves for some imported goods within a few weeks.

而现在，特朗普已经承认，他在仅仅两周前宣布对中国商品征收的145%关税是不可持续的。部分原因是塔吉特、沃尔玛以及其他美国大型零售商的高管发出警告，称消费者在几周内就会看到一些进口商品价格大幅上涨，货架空空如也。

Mr. Trump’s encounter with reality amounted to a vivid case study in the political and economic costs of striking the hardest of hard lines. He entered this trade war imagining a simpler era in which imposing punishing tariffs would force companies around the world to build factories in the United States.

特朗普向现实的妥协堪称是一个生动的案例研究，活生生地说明了采取强硬到极致的路线所带来的政治和经济代价。在这场贸易战爆发之初，他设想的是一个更简单的时代，征收惩罚性关税将迫使世界各地的公司在美国建厂。

He ends the month discovering that the world of modern supply chains is far more complex than he bargained for, and that it is far from clear his “beautiful” tariffs will have the effects he predicted.

到这个月末，他发现现代供应链的世界远比他预想的复杂，而且远不清楚他那些“漂亮的”关税是否会达到他所预期的效果。

This is not, of course, the explanation of the events of the past few days that the White House is putting out. Mr. Trump’s aides insist that his maximalist demands have been an act of strategic brilliance, forcing 90 countries to line up to deal with the president. It may take months, they acknowledge, to see the concessions that will result. But bending the global trade system to American will, they say, takes time.

当然，这并非白宫对过去几天所发生事件的解释。特朗普的助手们坚称，他的极致要求是一种战略智慧的体现，迫使90个国家排队与总统做交易。他们承认，可能需要数月时间才能看到最终达成的让步。但这毕竟是让全球贸易体系屈从于美国的意愿，是需要时间的，他们说。

“Have some patience and you will see,” the president’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters on Wednesday.

“耐心点，你们会看到结果的，”总统的新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特周三对记者说。

Mr. Trump himself insisted to reporters at the White House that everything was going according to plan.

特朗普本人在白宫向记者坚称，一切都在按计划进行。

“We have a lot of action going on,” he said, repeating his now-familiar line that “we’re not going to be a laughingstock that got taken advantage of by virtually every country in the world.” He suggested again that the United States needed to return to the halcyon era from 1870 to 1913 — the year the country began to impose income taxes — when tariffs funded the government and “we had more money than anybody.”

“我们有很多行动正在展开，”他重复着那句大家已经耳熟能详的话，“我们不会成为被世界上几乎每个国家都占便宜的笑柄。”他再次暗示，美国需要回到1870年至1913年——也就是美国开始征收所得税那一年——的美好时代，在那段时间里，关税为政府提供了资金，而“我们比任何国家都富有”。

And he repeated his prediction that “now we’re going to be making money with everyone, and everyone’s going to be happy.”

他还重复了自己的预测：“现在我们将与所有人做生意赚钱，所有人都会很开心。”

But happy did not seem to be the vibe around the White House in recent days.

但最近几天，白宫似乎并没有这种“开心”的氛围。

It started with Mr. Trump’s declaration that the “termination” of the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, whom he appointed in 2017, “cannot come fast enough.” His most senior economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, went further, saying the administration was looking at the legal options to remove him.

这一切始于特朗普宣称，要将他任命的美联储主席杰罗姆·鲍威尔“尽快解职”。他最资深的经济顾问凯文·哈塞特更进一步，称政府正在研究解除鲍威尔职务的法律选项。

Mr. Trump’s complaint is that Mr. Powell will not cut interest rates, for fear of stoking inflation. But the president was clearly concerned about the warnings from economists that the country could be headed to recession — one of his own making, one that his critics are already trying to label the Trump Slump even before it happens.

特朗普的不满在于，鲍威尔因担心引发通货膨胀而不愿降息。但总统显然对经济学家们发出的美国可能走向衰退的警告感到担忧——这衰退在一定程度上是他自己造成的，衰退还没发生，他的批评者就已经在称之为“特朗普衰退”了。

The tone of his comments seemed to suggest that if recession does come, the blame will fall on Mr. Powell.

从他的语气来看，如果衰退真的来临，将归咎于鲍威尔。

But once Mr. Trump declared “if I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me,” another market sell-off began. It made little difference that he doesn’t have the power to dismiss the Fed chair, as Mr. Powell has noted in recent days. The mere threat of it seemed to accelerate the sense that the United States has become the biggest source of market instability in the world.

但特朗普宣称“如果我想让他走人，他就会很快就走人，相信我”后，市场立刻开始了一轮抛售。尽管鲍威尔最近几天指出，特朗普并没有权力解雇美联储主席，但这似乎无关紧要。仅仅是这种威胁，似乎就加剧了人们的一种感觉，即美国已成为世界上最大的市场不稳定因素来源。

Then, on Tuesday, Mr. Trump changed his tune. “I have no intention of firing him,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Powell. That didn’t stop him from continuing his critique of Mr. Powell as “Mr. Late” with rate cuts, but it was enough to reverse the market sell-off.

接着，在周二，特朗普改变了说法。“我无意解雇他，”特朗普谈到鲍威尔时说道。这并没有阻止他继续批评鲍威尔在降息问题上是“慢半拍先生”，不过足以扭转市场的抛售局面。

The next walk-back came with China.

接下来做出让步的是与中国相关的问题。

The White House kept hinting that the Chinese were beginning to negotiate, seeking a way to end the tariffs. In fact, the strategy that Beijing appeared to be following was to wait for Mr. Trump to feel the pain of his own actions. The expected phone call from President Xi Jinping never came. And Mr. Trump didn’t want to be the first to call, either — a sign of desperation.

白宫不断暗示，中国人开始进行谈判了，在寻找结束关税的办法。事实上，北京方面似乎采取的策略是坐等特朗普感受到自己行为所带来的痛苦。人们预期的习近平主席的电话始终没有打来。而特朗普也不想先打电话——那会显得他太急切。

For weeks, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent seemed in obvious pain as he tried to justify the application of tariffs that, by many measures, outstrip those imposed by the Smoot-Hawley Act in 1930. (It is a historical comparison that no one in the White House wants to touch — other than to declare it a false analogy — because the cycles of retaliation triggered by that act of Congress worsened the Great Depression.)

几周来，财政部长斯科特·贝森特在试图为征税辩解时显然很痛苦。从很多方面来看，这些关税都远超1930年《斯穆特-霍利法》。（这是一个白宫没人愿意提及的历史比较——除了宣称这是不恰当的类比之外——因为当时国会的这一立法行动引发你来我往的报复，进一步加剧大萧条。）

“No one thinks the current status quo is sustainable” at those tariff rates, Mr. Trump told investors at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday in Washington, where his comments immediately leaked. He said he was looking for a de-escalation with Beijing, which “should give the world, the markets, a sign of relief.” But he admitted that any negotiation with China was going to be slow and painful, “a slog.”

在这样的关税税率下，“没人认为这是个可持续的现状，”贝森特周二在华盛顿的一次闭门会议上对投资者说道，这番话很快就被泄露了出去。他表示自己正在寻求与北京缓和局势，这“应该会给世界和市场一个松口气的信号”。但他也承认，与中国的任何谈判都将缓慢而痛苦，会是一场“苦战”。

In private, some Trump officials concede that they did not accurately predict China’s reaction. Mr. Trump seemed to expect China to be among the first to come begging for relief, given the size of its exports to the United States.

私下里，一些特朗普政府官员承认，他们没有准确预测到中国的反应。特朗普似乎曾预计，鉴于中国对美国的出口规模，中国会是最早来乞求减免关税的国家之一。

“Back in 2017, the first time Trump imposed tariffs on China, Beijing was caught by relative surprise,” Nicholas Mulder, an economic historian at Cornell University, said on Wednesday. “But they have been preparing for further escalation for many years,” he said. Now, “they have much more tolerance for economic pain, and a greater ability to weather this ratcheting up.”

“早在2017年，特朗普首次对中国征收关税时，北京方面相对来说有些措手不及，”康奈尔大学的经济史学家尼古拉斯·穆尔德周三表示。“但多年来，他们一直在为进一步的局势升级做准备，”他说。现在，“他们对经济痛苦有了更强的承受力，也有更强的能力来应对这种局势的不断升级。”

By late Tuesday Mr. Trump was publicly mulling lowering the Chinese tariffs, saying “145 percent is very high, and it won’t be that high, not going to be that high.” He added, “It got up to there,” as if the number had floated to that height by itself.

到周二晚些时候，特朗普已经在公开考虑降低对中国商品的关税了，他说：“145%非常高，不会那么高，不会那么高的。”他还说关税“去到了那么高”，仿佛税率是自己涨上去的。

On Wednesday, Ms. Leavitt said Mr. Trump would not lower the tariffs until the United States and China negotiated a new trade agreement — another mixed message out of the White House on the state of negotiations.

周三，莱维特表示，在美中双方就新的贸易协定进行谈判之前，特朗普不会降低关税——这是白宫就谈判状况做出的又一个前后矛盾的表态。

“Let me be clear: There will be no unilateral reduction in tariffs against China,” Ms. Leavitt said on Fox News.

“我要明确一点，”莱维特在福克斯新闻上称。“美国不会单方面降低对中国的关税。”

Other powers are clearly watching the Chinese approach and taking notes. Mr. Xi’s closest ally, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is engaged in his own high-stakes negotiation with the United States, over Ukraine. Iran is in the midst of talks about its nuclear program. They are looking for signs of weakness, or little indications of what could test Mr. Trump’s nerves.

其他大国显然在关注中国的应对方式并从中汲取经验。习近平最亲密的盟友，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京也在就乌克兰问题与美国进行着一场事关重大的谈判。伊朗在就其核计划进行谈判。他们都在寻找对方示弱的迹象，或者一些能说明特朗普的底线的蛛丝马迹。

Elizabeth Economy, who has written extensively about Chinese trade policy and served in the Commerce Department during the Biden administration, said the Trump team appeared to have ignored three fundamentals about China: the depth of the Chinese retaliatory tool kit, the extent of China’s economic leverage over the United States, and the ability of Mr. Xi to make the United States the scapegoat for China’s economic ills.

伊丽莎白·伊科诺米撰写了大量关于中国贸易政策的文章，曾在拜登政府的商务部工作。她表示，特朗普团队似乎忽视了关于中国的三个基本要点：中国报复手段的多样性、中国对美国经济的影响力，以及习近平将中国经济问题归咎于美国的能力。

“This game of chicken has done nothing but enable Xi Jinping to boost his standing in and outside China, while the United States appears uninformed and unmoored,” she said.

她说：“这种胆小鬼博弈毫无益处，反而帮助习近平提升了在中国内外的威望，而美国看起来不明就里，毫无章法。”