The unknown meet the unknown discussing the unknown. Let’s discuss Schrödinger’s Cat vs Schrödinger’s Trump.
Identities Unknown
CNBC reports President Trump says U.S. met this morning with China, declines to identify individuals involved
“We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China,” Trump told reporters on Thursday.
This BS contradicts what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said yesterday as noted in my post China Calls Trump’s Bluff, Trump Backs Down, Now What?
During a roundtable with reporters at the Institute of International Finance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States and China are not engaged in trade talks because the tariffs both countries have imposed on each other have “to be de-escalated before trade talks.”
Earlier in the discussion, Bessent told reporters, “I don’t think either side believes that the current tariff levels are sustainable, so I would not be surprised if they went down in a mutual way.”
He added that he does not have a timeline for talks to begin. Trump told reporters at the White House that the United States is “actively” talking with China.
China Denies Talks
Bloomberg reports Trump Says US Talking With China on Trade After Beijing’s Denial
President Donald Trump said his administration was talking with China on trade, after Beijing denied the existence of negotiations on a deal and demanded the US revoke all unilateral tariffs.
“They had a meeting this morning,” Trump said Thursday during a meeting with Norway’s prime minister when a reporter asked about the Chinese statement.
Pressed on which administration officials were involved in discussions, the US president said, “it doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China.”
Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman He Yadong earlier Thursday at a regular briefing in Beijing dismissed speculation that progress has been made in bilateral communications, saying “any reports on development in talks are groundless,” and urging the US to “show sincerity” if it wants to make a deal.
“The US should respond to rational voices in the international community and within its own borders and thoroughly remove all unilateral tariffs imposed on China, if it really wants to solve the problem,” he said.
Trump has tried to get Xi on the phone a number of times since he returned to office, but the Chinese leader has, so far, resisted. Beijing wants to see a number of steps from Washington before it will agree to trade negotiations, including showing more respect and naming a point person for the dialogue, Bloomberg News previously reported.
Trump shifted his tone yet again on Thursday, criticizing Beijing for refusing to take deliveries of Boeing Co. jets and for its role in the trade of illegal fentanyl. The US imposed 20% tariffs on Chinese imports tied to fentanyl before slapping them with an additional 125% duty.
“Boeing should default China for not taking the beautifully finished planes that China committed to purchase,” Trump posted on social media. “And, by the way, Fentanyl continues to pour into our Country from China, through Mexico and Canada, killing hundreds of thousands of our people, and it better stop, NOW!”
“Better Stop NOW!” or What?
Or what? Mr. President?
Whatya gonna do? Put tariffs at 5,000 percent? Blow snot in a hankie?
Once you have placed maximum pain, there is nothing else you can do.
Talks? What Talks?
- Bessent: The United States and China are not engaged in trade talks because the tariffs both countries have imposed on each other have “to be de-escalated before trade talks.”
- Bessent: The US “does not have a timeline for talks to begin.“
- Bloomberg: “Trump has tried to get Xi on the phone a number of times since he returned to office, but the Chinese leader has, so far, resisted.”
- China: “Any reports on development in talks are groundless.” The US needs to “show sincerity” if it wants to make a deal.
- Trump: “They had a meeting this morning. It doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal ‘later’.”
In retrospect, I left off one important opinion.
The cult says “If Trump says a meeting happened,” then it did. And if Trump says it doesn’t matter who “they” is, then it doesn’t matter who “they” is.
Finally, both trump and Bessent are telling the truth because the meeting both happened and didn’t happen.
To understand how this works we need to explore quantum physics.
Schrödinger’s Cat vs Schrödinger’s Trump
Please consider How Is Schrödinger’s Cat Both Alive and Dead?
The experiment states that a hypothetical cat is locked in a box with some radioactive substance controlling a vial of poison. When the substance decays, it triggers a Geiger counter that causes the poison to be released, thereby killing the cat.
Since the box is locked, and we on the outside don’t know whether or not the radioactive substance has decayed and released the poison, we can’t tell if the cat is dead or alive. So, until we open the box to know for sure, the cat is both dead and alive. Mathematically speaking, there’s a 50 percent chance the cat is dead and a 50 percent chance the cat is alive.
In quantum mechanics terms, the cat’s ability to be in an ambiguous state of both alive and dead until it’s observed (i.e. when someone opens the box) is referred to as quantum indeterminacy or the observer’s paradox. The paradox states that an event or an experiment’s observer affects its outcome. In this case, whomever is performing this hypothetical experiment can affect whether the cat remains in an unknown state or they can open the box and know if the cat is dead or alive with 100 percent certainty.
In “Trumperland”, contradictory statements can both be true, simultaneously, even upon observation!
This is the amazing distinction between Schrödinger’s Cat and Schrödinger’s Trump.
In “Trumperland”, meetings can have happened and not happened simultaneously. It does not matter who “they” is or even if there is a “they”.
Theoretical meetings between unknown “theys” is sufficient to say that a meeting that took place, and also that it didn’t, no matter what was or was not discussed.
It’s quite amazing.
If ever you are perplexed by obviously contradictory administration statements, then think of Schrödinger’s Trump and conclude both sets of statements are true even if direct observation appears otherwise.
Related Posts
April 9, 2025: Administration Lie of the Day: “Trump Goaded China into a Bad Position”
Treasury Secretary Bessent is a bad liar. Clowns portray it as 5D chess.
April 23, 2025: China Calls Trump’s Bluff, Trump Backs Down, Now What?
Who is winning the trade war so far?
April 13, 2025: China Halts Rare Earth Exports Desperately Needed by the US
I have been warning about this for years. It’s now happening.
April 15, 2025: China Halts Boeing Jet Delivery: Goodbye Boeing, Hello Airbus?
The trade war that nobody will win expands to Boeing aircraft.
Apologies offered because I failed to address the above posts from the perspective of Schrödinger’s Trump.
Xi is now cowering in fear because Trump said “Better Stop NOW!”
There does not need to be an “Or else ….” following statement because putting “NOW!” in caps with an explanation point was sufficient to start a meeting that never happened.
In case you missed it, please see I’m Accused of Never Supporting Trump. Let’s Have a Fact Check
According to Reuters, both sides are de-escalating and China is exempting tariffs on some US imports. We just don’t know which items are exempted so the confusion continues.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-considers-exempting-some-goods-us-tariffs-source-says-2025-04-25/
Now trump gets on TV and states that he has “met with XI many times”. The problem is that was years ago and current meetings are only in his narcissistic dreams of self importance.
Sad to trust China more than our own president. Disgusting in fact!
Shocking! There are two stories (“A meeting occurred” and “There are “No Trade Talks”) that completely contradict each other. As things play out, whatever happens, Trump will say, “See, I told you so!” and claim VICTORY! Dealmaker in Chief!
New story, same story. Take both sides, prefer one, and, when it doesn’t happen as stated, point to the other side of the story and claim supremacy and dominance! The cult eats it up. Every Time.
as the article points out, what more can Trump do? He went to 11 waaay too early.
it’s an embargo. Boeing said CHina stopped taking plane deliveries. even if this gets fixed really smartly tomorrow, there will be a bad two quarters just from this “hiccup”.
Creative accounting techniques will limit it to one quarter.
“Or what? Mr. President?” Maybe he will hold his breath till he turns blue and soil his underwear. Or call Xi and Chinese stupid derogatory names and soil his underwear. No matter, soiling his underwear will be a major part of his response.
Hi Mish,
I generally agree with most things you say and I love your blog.
But I’m really curious how anything we are seeing here with Trump is new? Could you not have guessed this pattern of behavior before the election? (I don’t say this in a negative way, I respect you very much)
It pains me to read more and more stuff like this and at the same time, I cannot come to terms with why smart people like you still supported Trump. I don’t understand how any of this was an unknown …..
Ive read your election manifesto and what you stood for. And i would have gladly voted for you and that manifesto. But I could not vote for Trump because he has no strategy beyond himself. I gather but I cannot believe my republican friends found the democratic offerings were way more toxic than this current Trump shenanigans? (And yes, I know the democrats are no angels and a borderline useless bunch …. But I had to pick a choice …. And i felt they were the lesser evil despite all the woke nonsense and big government bullshit ….)
I did not vote for Trump because I expected this. I still think Kamala would have been much worse.
I was not joking. I wrote in Mish for President
why not vote libertarian or green party slates. i also vote in EU country. they have those type parties everywhere over there. also. i only write myself in on some local judge slates as i could serve, in case i won. i normally get about 10 or so pals voting for me from around the country.
After 100 days of this bullshit how can you believe Harris would have been worse? Please explain what proposed policy would have made American life worse and how Trump has been better.
To vote for yourself or another impossible choice doesn’t make much sense, our system is our system one vote can’t change it. Campaigning as a third or non-party candidate might make sense and I might have voted for you under those circumstances.
i don’t think Kamala would have been worse. she would have continued as we were. not great, but look at the global chaos we are sowing and we’re stil sowing chaos and haven’t even begun to reap.
I see , I stand corrected them, w.r.t your voting position. I think you did mention you wrote in.
In the short term, Kamala could not have been worse.
In the long run, Trump will be a disaster and the status quo will be a little less than a disaster
In the long term, America requires something much better than both parties and there will be a lot of pain!
Only positive thing I can say about Trump is that he is forcing some pain today on certain realities …like the unsustainability of budgets or big government waste or the “meritocracy” of the rust belt and American voters (their choices of not getting highly educated or voting choices that allowed preferential treatment of capital vs wage or capital flight or offshoring for 3-4 decades and waking up now asking who the heck was responsible for this …. It was not the evil Chinese …. Nobody put a gun to anybody’s head to ship those jobs …. we slept and feasted on cheap goods and enjoyed the party …..)
You had not to pick a choice and they were not two. Elections are not team sports, there are more than two contestants, including none.
Yeah, but we cannot afford to be such purists here. A vote for anybody other than a democrat or republican is , for all practical purposes, a wasted voice.
I’m all for other solutions. We can go to rank choice voting, etc which would be much better systems where we can truly vote our heart …..
in a panic mode…
empty shelves and higher prices in a week or two
They might not be lying after all! They probably invited a couple of Chinese tourists in the DC area, took them around the White House and had lunch with them. LOL
This is Hysteric Psychosis.
The prospect of Americans staring at empty shelves at Walmart and Costco must scare a political entertainer like Trump. So far, the trade war stupidly declared by Trump was mostly entertainment, but in a few weeks the real consequences will see Trump’s approval rating tank well below anything Biden has seen.
Most commentators are using expletive to convince us that Trump is an idiot, a moron and a senile.
and they should. It was trump who started using it against his opponent, I guess it was cool at that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nicknames_used_by_Donald_Trump
so how would you call Donnie now. you have 3 options:
Looks about right, I think 2 fit best
It does not take an expletive to be convinced that trump is a moron. I have known it since the apprentice. However, he is better defined as a simpleton or, bully or, grifter or pedophile, or narcissist. There are many descriptions that are accurate without an expletive. My best description of him is simply liar.
Who does he work for?
I did get a kick out of hearing trump say; “There all calling me, 75 nations have called and they are kissing my ass”.
China is having trump for lunch and no one should call him. Let trump twist in the wind…
Schrodinger cat died in a box for the lack of oxygen.
Love the Schrodinger’s analogy. That’s hilarious!
We appreciate your brilliant discussions of Trump chaos, tariffs etc. Whatever his objectives, there is no putting the toothpaste back into this tube. The US is not agreement capable. Joe Biden made that clear when he stole Russia’s Central Bank assets. The US cannot be trusted. Joe Biden made that clear when he blew up the NordStream pipelines. For his part, Trump has done nothing but tear up agreements and violate trust and international norms through both terms. People and businesses cannot prosper without trust, integrity and the rule of law, and some predictability. Neither can countries. A little morality would help, too.
Trump inherited an all but failed state, with escalating internal societal stresses. A 7% of GDP federal deficit and a $1.2 trillion trade deficit for starters. Draconian remedial measures were necessary/are necessary. So, you can give Trump and Co. kudos for trying; but he/they are making the crisis worse. Much worse. Chaos is not the solution to anything.
What a sad place when the Chinese leader’s statements are more believable than the US president!
Authoritarians of different stripes. Why believe either of them?
You don’t know which state Trump is in because you are not in the position of being able to observe Trump. There certainly is someone that can observe him and there by cause him to collapse his wave function into either meeting or no meeting. That person is probably Xi or one of his advisors. We are too far away to see the box so it can’t be any of us.
I have a simpler explanation. Having witnessed first hand a relative with Alzheimer’s, the Donald’s discombobulated thinking and speech reminds me of hers through the stages of the disease. That’s the natural consequence of tripling down on the gerontocracy.
During the talks with Iran Hegseth opened his mouth, before attacking the Hooties. This time around no leaks to the puke media.
Trump opened his mouth and the stock market went up. Next week Trump will open his mouth, as he does every day, and the stock market might go down.
ADHD: no winners only losers. We will win in the long run.
Warner Oland, Sidney Toler or Ross Martin?
trump needs a rubber room. get the men with the nets and the straight jackets. amerika has their first mad wannabe king. the genocidal corpse biden is looking like sun tzu in comparison.
So why are you guys here so triggered if Zelensky does not take Trump’s ”peace plan” seriously? Is there a peace plan or not? Has it been discussed with Putin or not? Especially as Putin keeps stating that no peace is possible? I guess both Trump and Putin are in the box together with the cat and noone knows who really is there alive or dead or who talks to whom or not.
In any case it’s the cat’s fault, this we know from Facebook. Everything else is unknown.
IDGAF. It’s like Arestovych explained to zelensky: give up 4 oblasts now or 6 in six months or 8 in a year.
Not More of Rumsfeldts unknown unknowns. OMG.
It’s a known known.
Rumsfeld may have built that quote on a similar statement by Jim Morrison of the band The Doors.
Trump is gone completely around the boomer bend of dementia………..
Pres. Trump met with Donald Trump, then declared “Great progress was made at today’s important meeting!”
US officials familiar with the lack of thinking in Washington expressed great optimism that a deal with the Americans on how to possibly approach the USA on its potential negotiations with China had almost been finalized. Direct talks with China are expected to begin any year now. Stock futures soared on the news.
China starting to feel the pain as well…
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/our-export-orders-disappeared-chinese-factories-shutting-down-laying-workers-ft-finds
Yes, no winners only losers
But Xi does not have midterm elections to worry about.
https://mishtalk.com/economics/china-calls-trumps-bluff-trump-backs-down-now-what/
He doesn’t have to worry about elections but he does have to worry about revolts from underlings.
Lol! Sure. I bet you even know who these underlings are. They are probably in touch with you regularly. How else would you be aware of this.
What’s that? Oh, you were speculating. You were making an assumption.
In other words: You were making sh*t up, as usual.
This is a standing problem that every authoritarian leader faces, from Xi to Putin to Kim Jong Un to Trump?
A drone in their future.
Where. And why didn’t Trump tell the NYT and Bloomberg.
I was gonna say that articles like this are a complete waste of time, except I just realized that the comment list does show who is willing to waste their time on articles like these.
pot/kettle
black, eh?
There are no thought experiments In Trumperland.
And it doesn’t matter if Schrödinger’s Cat is alive or dead.
Immigrants ate the cat with a side of dog.
That is all you really need to know.
Trump also told Vladimir to “STOP!”But that doesn’t seem to be working either.
Perhaps Trump has made so many bullshit statements…
that none of his words carry any weight now.
I don’t think I need quantum mechanics to figure out Trump. He is a political entertainer who craves attention. And, unfortunately, Americans like politics as entertainment. That’s why we are now in this trade mess.
Isn’t there an old parable about a boy who cried “WOLF” too many times that is applicable?
As I wrote the other day, Martin Armstrong’s blog and an interview confirmed that China is willing to talk privately, not in the media or any other forum. Martin indicated that Trump would be a fool not to take the private meeting offer. It seems that Trump or people close to him read Martin’s work and that Trump listens. If true this is good news. Nobody understands geopolitical issues, trade, capital flows, and currency subjects better than Martin, who deeply understands them. Trump or his advisors do not.
I wouldn’t listen to anything Martin Armstrong says. He is a convicted felon, and scam artist.
Agree with PapaDave
You dropped down significantly, in my opinion, as an analysis if you let state propaganda influence your thinking.
I recommend you watch a documentary called The Forecaster. The second version will be out soon. Martin is not a criminal, as neither are the J6 protesters. As a matter of fact, it was a liberal Supreme Court justice who got Martin out of prison for a crime he did not commit. He was jailed for about eight years for contempt of Court. Did you know this fact? The maximum sentence for contempt is only 18 months, but the DOJ kept rolling the time over, which is illegal, to keep him in jail, much of the time in solidarity confinement. Did you know this?. Of course, Wikipedia does not mention this. It only tells the story of cherry-picked data because it, you know, it’s Wikipedia.
I believe you have been misled and are missing out on the greatest analyst of our times. You’re a fool not to reevaluate your opinion. His work is unmatched. Phil Davis
As that description applies to Trump also, wouldn’t this be the same as like attracting like?
You should drop down to read my comments to Mitch. Martin is no a criminal, just a the j6ers are not. Your brain has been infected with state propaganda. Sadly, so many cannot think for themselves.
Lol! He pleaded guilty to cheating investors out of $700 million and spent 11 years in jail.
Xi has refused over a hundred phone calls from Trump so far. As soon as Xi sees Trump’s name on the caller ID, he laughs hysterically.
Xi also has a custom ringtone so that any call from the U.S. plays clown circus music.
They just use that ID it’s really a solar salesman. 😅😅
meanwhile while we are subject to confused whiplash Greece is booming Greece ran a primary fiscal surplus (revenue > expenditure) of 4.8% of GDP in 2024 (excl interest payments), with the overall budget balance also in surplus at 0.3% (incl interest payments). Surplus of 11.4 billion euros
Funny, Zerohedge said Greece wouldn’t even exist by 2015, back in 2010
I think it has something to do with sound fiscal policies.
Unfortunately, discerning the truth to what is really going on among other countries and the US on the tariff is impossible. Trump and co. are saying whatever they think the market wants to hear.
hmmm New-gen electric car batteries promise 1500km range, 515km charge in five minutesChina’s CATL – makers of electric car batteries for brands including Tesla, BMW and Hyundai – has revealed a new revolutionary rapid charging, long-range battery tech. https://www.drive.com.au/news/new-gen-electric-car-batteries-promise-1500km-range-515km-charge-in-five-minutes/#comments
We’ve never had anything like this ‘GRIFTER IN CHIEF”:
“Trump’s meme coin soars as president offers dinner to top holdersTrump’s dinner invitation for top $TRUMP meme coin holders has several eligibility criteria’
Trump coin was just for testing the function of the insider trading scam. The results? All systems go
He went to go see a guy about a thing …
100% of everyone who isn’t a Lutnicker knows FULL WELL that Trump cannot name the person because then 100% of everyone would be able to prove that Trump was lying and they aren’t talking to anyone about anything.
You wouldn’t know her…. she goes to a different school… in Canada.
If he’s gonna lie to me, I expect him to at least lie to me competently. This is just poor stagecraft.
Good point. Well made.
Your diaper is full.
Your IQ is so empty you lean back into diaper jokes
They : Navarro met with Trump to talk about talking to China
Brilliant!
“We met with China” means Navarro went to a Chinese restaurant