In my opinion, China is definitely winning this trade war. Take, for example, what happened in just the past month or so. President Trump announced that he was implementing a 10% tariff on roughly $300 billion in goods effective September 1. He got no reciprocal response from China and two weeks later decided to walk them back. He delayed those tariffs and cited not wanting to impact the Christmas shopping season as the reason.This is a tacit admission by Trump that his tariffs are indeed impacting U.S. consumers. If tariffs are being entirely funded by China as he has said many times in the past, how would that impact consumers at home? It does because the cost of tariffs is being borne by U.S. consumers and business, not China. Despite what is being said publicly, the White House has to know that this trade war is negatively impacting the U.S. economy and any escalation increases the likelihood that we'll experience a recession in the near future.Which brings us to this week. China announced its own tariffs on $75 billion in goods. Never mind the fact that U.S. representatives said recently that trade talks were positive and progress was being made. That clearly wasn't true. While China took the recent U.S. tariff announcement in relative stride, President Trump did the opposite.He immediately announced a retaliation by raising previously tariff rates from 25% to 30% on $250 billion in Chinese goods while raising the rate on the remaining $300 billion in goods from 10% to 15%. On top of that, Trump "ordered" via tweet U.S. companies to avoid doing any kind of business with China. Outside of the fact that Trump has no authority over the private sector, it's the most significant response in the trade war that he's made yet.My biggest concern is that all of this is being done on the fly and China knows it. The U.S. has announced tariffs and delayed tariffs multiple times over the past year. Is there any long-term plan to this or is this White House just reacting in the moment? China has already said that it's willing to bear the cost of tariffs over the long haul. But is Bejing also walking the U.S. right into a recession? The domestic economic data is already deteriorating and higher tariff rates on Chinese imports are only going to serve to raise costs for consumers and slow growth for U.S. businesses. Does Trump want to win this trade war at all costs or is he willing to back down, help out the global economy and try to save face as he heads into the 2020 election?It sure seems like the former at this point. The trade war has already been impacting the global economy and things figure to only get worse as it drags on. Who blinks first in this standoff? I really think it will be the United States.