Bolton revelations undercut Trump’s reelection message of toughness on China

President Trump was in a White House event with governors Thursday when he took a moment to punch out a tweet from his cellphone — threatening to decouple the U.S. economy from China, the world’s second-largest economy.

The missive was another salvo in a long bilateral trade dispute, but it also represented an effort by the president to reestablish himself as a hard-liner on China — a day after shocking revelations from his former national security adviser John Bolton painted him as obsequious to Chinese President Xi Jinping in private conversations.

Trump’s urgency underscores how Bolton’s disclosures in a new book about his White House tenure could complicate a key pillar of the president’s reelection strategy as his campaign has attacked former vice president Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as soft on China.

Read the full article and more in The Washington Post.