MIAMI – This week, we’ve been exploring how mock battles can go wrong.

In one corner, we have The American Dreamer: the Blond Bombshell himself, Donald J. Trump.

In the other, there is Xi Jinping of the Great Red Hope, determined not to be the Last Emperor of the Middle Kingdom.

Like pro wrestlers, the two have been entertaining the folks in the cheap seats with their “Mongolian chops”… “body avalanches”… and the always-popular “spinning elbow corkscrew drops.”

Pretending to do battle, both are really on the same team… working together towards the same goal – separating the fans from their money.

One spends money he doesn’t have. The other takes the fake money and pretends it is real. Both believe they are getting fabulously rich.

The Chinese now have dozens of cities and shopping malls that didn’t exist in 1982 – though these still may have no clients, no buyers, and no revenues.

The Americans have stocks they think are worth 24 times as much as they were in 1982 – even though the typical customer has not a penny more of real purchasing power.

Cluster of Colossal Frauds

The whole fantasy on both sides of the Pacific is based on a cluster of colossal frauds – that fake money is just as good as the real thing, that debt is as good as savings, that the feds can improve an economy by lending fake money out at real rates below zero, and that people with PhDs and claptrap theories can do a better job of guiding an economy than market-set prices.

But in order for the flimflam to work, both sides have to cooperate to keep the hustle going. If the two go off script… the whole show could turn into a flop.

Here’s more from China’s state-run Global Times:

The Chinese side will follow suit to the end and at any cost, and will firmly attack, using new comprehensive countermeasures, to firmly defend the interest of the nation and its people… China will “retaliate immediately, intensively, without any hesitation” if the U.S. releases a new list of tariffs on $100 billion worth of additional imports, Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng says, adding:

“We Chinese won’t pick fights, but if someone picks a fight, we’ll resolutely meet them head-on. We Chinese always take things seriously; we’ll act as we say.”