SOY SAUCE BEATS KETCHUP! The Crowd Hands Xi the Trade War Golden Spoon, and Trump's Tariff Stew Goes Back to the Kitchen

Hands off your pans, chefs. The plates are at the pass, the judges have tasted, and the verdict is in. In the superpower cook-off nobody asked for and everybody has to eat, the crowd has crowned Xi Jinping the winner of the trade war. Donald Trump's tariff stew, simmered for years and seasoned with a lot of shouting, has been sent back to the kitchen with a note: too much salt, not enough substance.

Let's look at the recipe card. The US-China trade war started in 2018 and boiled over in 2025, when both sides piled on enormous tariffs before agreeing a truce in May. Then came the late-September 2026 summit in Washington. According to ABC News, the two sides agreed reciprocal tariff cuts on roughly sixty billion dollars of goods and pushed the truce out to January 2027. But rare earth minerals and AI-linked technology were left off both lists, and so were American soybeans, the biggest US export to China. Experts quoted by ABC called the deal limited next to the total trade between the two. That isn't a banquet. It's an amuse-bouche.

And the kitchen numbers don't flatter the home cook. France 24 reports that the Penn Wharton Budget Model put the effective US tariff rate on Chinese imports at just under a quarter as of July, the highest of any major US trading partner. Meanwhile, Chinese exports made up about three quarters of two-way trade from January to August. A Eurasia Group analyst told the outlet China still has the upper hand, pointing to its flexible supply chains and an export boom the tariffs have barely dented.

The crowd has clearly read that menu. On Morfi, the opinion market where people put real money behind their views, XI JINPING holds 60% consensus against 40% for TRUMP. That's the crowd's conviction, not a headcount: 56 traders have put $106,938 on the line, and trading opened less than a day ago. The batter barely had time to rise before the judges picked a side. My colleague Madame Odds read the same leaves earlier, watching Xi pull ahead in the trade war mist, and the crowd is now serving up the same dish.

Now my own verdict, and that's all it is: an opinion. Trump cooks like a contestant who thinks volume equals flavor. He cranks every burner to max, shouts at the oven and calls the smoke alarm applause. Xi cooks like the quiet one in the corner who has been reducing a stock for three days and won't tell you what's in it. Tariffs are cayenne. A pinch wakes a dish up. A fistful burns your own tongue first. And a truce that leaves out soybeans, rare earths and AI chips isn't a peace deal. It's a garnish over an empty plate. To my palate, Beijing's dish has more depth, though I'd never mistake depth for sweetness.

What to taste next: whether January 2027 brings a real deal or just another extension, whether soybeans ever get a seat at the table, and whether the rare earth and tech restrictions start to thaw. Any one of those could flip this cook-off before the dessert course. Think the crowd has misread the recipe? Join the market on Morfi, put your money on your palate, and argue with the judges. Service is still open.