'Big problem': Chuck Todd reveals why it's bad Trump is 'violating one of his own rules'

Earlier on Wednesday, several CEOs warned that President Donald Trump's tariffs on China could lead to empty store shelves this summer. This has led to Trump reportedly clamoring to make a deal with China to end the ongoing trade war.

During a recent panel discussion on CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt, legal analyst Elliott Williams noted that Trump has emphasized that a core part of his brand has been that of the dealmaker. But journalist Chuck Todd pointed out that China has already outmaneuvered Trump by getting him to preemptively offer to drop some of his tariffs (which are currently at 145%) without any official dialogue.

"They've already got him negotiating with himself," Todd said. "Donald Trump's already violating one of his own rules, right? Don't negotiate with yourself. And he's already negotiating with himself because he was trying to please the markets."

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The former Meet the Press host went on to explain that Trump is motivated by the politics of bad "visuals" like empty store shelves across the country, should businesses not be able to pay the exceedingly high trade duties when buying products from China. He then observed that Chinese President Xi Jinping may have Trump in a bind, knowing that the Chinese economy has a higher tolerance for short-term pain than that of the United States.

"This is how you can actually move Donald Trump, right? Everybody's trying to figure out how do you convince him. He understands visuals and he does get that. And so, you know, the here's the real trap he's in," he continued. "If he's afraid of empty shelves, he's not going to be able to stand his ground and wait for China to come to the table. So he's in this box where he does have to negotiate with himself because he's worried about the short-term pain, this short-term visual."

The panel also considered the optics of Trump's performance as the 100th day of his second term approaches next week. Todd referenced a Pew Research poll published Wednesday that found Trump with just a 40% approval rating from respondents compared to a 47% approval rating just two months ago.

"What's interesting about it is they've lost faith in Donald Trump's ability to to to do the job in many of these cases," Todd said. "They want what he campaigned on. They want him to succeed. And they're sitting there going, 'this guy doesn't know how to execute a strategy to get to the goal he set. and that's his big problem.'"

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