Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that usually takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech business and politics, but this is a special Labor Day weekend edition, where we're going to talk about the trade war, because that may affect labor more than anything else over the coming months.

I'm Dan Primak, and I'm joined by Steve Levine, Axios's future editor, who, beginning Monday,

will be expanding his future newsletter to five days per week. So Steve, you've been arguing

in your newsletter and on the site that our trade fight with China is going to be a long one.

What's the main reason why?

What's going on is that we have two very hard-headed leaders, Trump and Xi Jinping, the leader of

China, who have domestic audiences to attend to. Trump, when he's lashing out at American trade partners and the

terrible trade deals that his predecessors have consummated, he is talking to his base. He's not

talking to economists and labor historians. And the same with Xi Jinping. At home, he has history on his mind.

What does that mean? That's a good question. Chinese are obsessed with the opium wars.

These are two... That's going back away. Yes, this goes back to the early and the mid part of the

19th century. The British forced China to open up and trade with the West under Western terms

and not incidentally addicted a large part of the Chinese population to opium.

And they call the 19th century the century of humiliation. And a lot of what China is doing now,

it's foreign policy, its attitude toward the West stems from that. We're going to bounce back from

that. It's not exactly retribution, but it's more like that ain't happening again. And so when Trump is out

there chest out with his finger poking in China's chest, that's where Xi Jinping is coming from.

He's not going to be pushed around. He's not going to agree to a deal that to the Chinese audience

looks like Trump won.

But he also doesn't have to run for re-election in two years.

Trump does.

I mean, is there a way out for Trump here that he can save face with his base, but also get

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