I like to play seven card stud. The game is dealt with two cards down (hole), then four up, and the seventh down. Betting occurs with each card after third card is dealt. A good player reads the other players, their cards, and their playing. Watching the other players allows a person to evaluate the odds of their cards beating the other players’. An experienced player will seldom bluff because it will give away strategies. Boasting and then folding shows a lack of skill. Instead of constantly bluffing it’s better to fold a weak hand.

Donald Trump, the businessman, tried to bluff his way into many deals and then walked away when he couldn’t get his way. He went forward with several deals and later declared bankruptcy. These bankruptcies were through his many limited liability companies. He made money upfront while vendors and investors lost their investment.

President Trump is now playing poker with China using tariffs as chips. The President’s hole cards are weak and each up card is weak too. He raises the bet with each bad card to continue the bad bluff. The Chinese have two powerful hole cards should they need to use them. One is China could break the sanctions with North Korea. The other hole card is their two trillion dollars of U.S. Treasury notes. China could threaten to sell a discounted hundred billion on the days before we auction our debt. We may not find buyers for ours or have to pay more interest increasing the deficit and debt.

China’s up cards are strong because we need to sell our products to them and they can buy them cheaper elsewhere. For instance we sell a quarter of our soybeans to China. Tariffs mean Brazil, Argentina, and Chinese farms in Africa take up the slack. Each additional tariff means China digs in deeper and the China’s Xi can’t lose face. Xi doesn’t bluff and Trump does!