Yesterday, president Trump laid out the stakes in the ever-escalating trading war between the US and China, in typical laconic fashion: "We may want countries to choose between us and China" (a topic discussed further here), with the White House adding that "The ball is in China's court. China needs to make a deal with us."

This strategy, of forcing the world into "us (or US) vs them" camps first emerged last week when Trump reduced reciprocal tariffs for all countries except China, something we highlighted at the time.

A few days later, this now appears to be the official strategy in the global trade war.

As the WSJ reports, the Trump admin plans to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure U.S. trading partners to limit their dealings with China, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.

The idea, as we laid out in not so many words, is to extract commitments from U.S. trading partners to isolate China's economy in exchange for reductions in trade and tariff barriers imposed by the White House. US officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries (the so-called "transshipment" loophole), prevent Chinese firms from locating in their territories to avoid U.S. tariffs, and not absorb China's cheap industrial goods into their economies.

Those measures are meant to put a final stake in China's already sinking economy (which somewhat ironically got a boost in the first quarter as its export partners front-loaded purchased goods ahead of the tariff price surge which is already in place and which will put a deep freeze on China's manufacturing empire) and force Beijing to the negotiating table with less leverage ahead of potential talks between Trump and President Xi Jinping. The exact demands could vary widely by nation, given their degree of involvement with the Chinese economy.

US officials have already presented the idea in early talks with some countries according to WSJ sources, who added that Trump himself hinted at the strategy on Tuesday, telling the Spanish-language program "Fox Noticias" he would consider making countries choose between the US and China in response to a question about Panama deciding not to renew its role in the Belt and Road Initiative, China's global infrastructure program for developing nations.