Is Trump scared?
He seems to have figured it out. Trump is probably the first U.S. president to understand what kind of creature China is.
The China he has to face is a monster that can guess what the U.S. intends to do within three steps, without even using intelligence. He had been pretending to be scared because his industry was weak; they had no confidence in surviving if the U.S. used force against them. After so many years of development and inducing the U.S. to self-destruct its own capabilities, this monster has started to stop pretending.
And he himself, facing such a three-body Cthulhu, doesn't even have the power of the Wall Facers. He can only rely on performances to maneuver his way out from China's encirclement—reindustrialization. Last year's P5 nuclear military exercises have already shown that America's nuclear deterrence is barely holding up. If this continues, within 10 years, the world will be left with only China possessing nuclear deterrence. At that time, the U.S. will be in a precarious position. After all, with your one-third hit rate, even a nuclear counterstrike can be a gamble. So Trump must reindustrialize, at least to restore strategic nuclear deterrence.
Some people just think too kindly of China—China will not allow the U.S. to reindustrialize. The Chinese are reasonable, but with your U.S. credibility, reasoning won't reach you.
Trump is just acting, shaping himself into someone driven by his own delusions. The real goal is to crash the U.S. stock market. Coupled with the lack of transparency in tariff policies, it prevents money from flowing out of the U.S., forcing it to go into American manufacturing.
