“They need us more than we need them.” Paul Teller bottom-lined the belief underpinning President Donald Trump’s China trade strategy during some Q&A with distributors attending the annual Heating, Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Distributor’s International (HARDI) Congressional Fly-In in Washington, D.C., on May 15.

Teller is the special assistant to the president for legislative affairs. Five days earlier, the administration raised tariffs up to 25 percent for a quarter of a billion dollars of Chinese exports. Before the HARDI Fly-In could commence, China had already responded in kind, raising its own selected tariffs to between 5 and 25 percent.