The humble pinata has become one of the latest targets to take a whacking in US President Donald Trump’s trade war.Party store owner Patricia Loperena said she has supplied fewer parties this year than last, which means she is selling fewer of the colorful candy-filled papier mache favors at her southern California establishment.Another blow to Loperena’s business? The rising cost of the raw materials to make trinkets and custom pinatas, a traditional game of Latino children’s parties that are now popular in much of the United States.”People stop spending. Instead of, like, making a bigger party, they make it a lot smaller,” the 45-year-old told AFP.Prices are jumping, and that has customers on edge. “They just know there’s a lot of unpredictability, and they just want to be cautious,” she said.They are spending less overall because of jitters over how Trump’s policies will unfold.Loperena is worried about Trump’s new tariffs, too — especially the outright trade war underway with China.To adjust and help protect Ollin Party Store in this Los Angeles suburb, Loperena has already placed supply orders early to get ahead of the tariffs and build up inventory.That may help keep her prices stable for a few months but Loperena’s supplier — based in the United States, selling imported products — has already warned that the next order will be pricier.Most of the napkins, plates, balloons and other goods in her store are labeled “Made in China.”- Going to ‘get worse’-  Some might say tariff policy has been a pinata-esque moving target under Trump — chaotic swings followed by an economy that has taken a beating. On what he called “Liberation Day” in early April, Trump dramatically hiked levies globally, standing with a chart of country-specific tariff rates to announce a new era. He threatened allies and close trading partners like Canada and Mexico. Then he slapped tariffs on much of the world, including triple digit ones against China. Trump has since lessened many of the immediate levies to 10 percent, saying a 90-day suspension was needed to negotiate.That leaves American business owners dangling in suspense to see what happens next. In the San Fernando Valley, many small businesses like Loperena’s were already struggling to compete with online outlets.Service providers and retailers all depend on imports to one extent or another, for parts or products.”Everything comes from overseas, from China, Taiwan and stuff,” said Angel De Luna, who runs a store that sells sewing machines and vacuum cleaners.For this 28-year-old taking over his father’s shop, which survives not so much on sales but on repairing and servicing appliances people already own, the tariffs are shaping up to be the last straw.”We’re just hanging in there the best we can,” said De Luna. “But it’s probably going to get worse.”- Many enemies – The service sector is not immune either to Trump’s trade war, and neither are his supporters. While the president says he is fighting unfair trading practices to erase trade deficits, many are bracing for bad economic news.OJ Longmire, 46, owns a popular barbershop and beauty parlor in the valley and says tariffs hurt him too.”It definitely affects us all. You know, supplies, everything here on my station. Clippers. I don’t believe this is American made,” he said, pointing to the equipment, gels and lotions he works with to do people’s hair.Marcos Ochoa, owner of a small hardware and gardening products store, said people are “going crazy” with tariff uncertainty.”Because we don’t know what to expect. You don’t know if you’re going to buy at higher prices,” said Ochoa.Ochoa, who imports his products mainly from Japan and Europe, said his costs have not yet risen and it is too early to say what the future holds.But he has advice for Trump.”He needs to stop and think what he’s gonna say or what he’s gonna do before he acts, like, automatically,” said Ochoa.He voted for Trump in the belief it would be good for business. Now, he has his doubts.”He was good four years ago,” Ochoa said. “Now I don’t know. He’s making a lot of enemies, that’s for sure.”

With his storm of tariffs on Chinese goods, US President Donald Trump has torched ties with Beijing and likely wrecked any hope of meeting his counterpart Xi Jinping in the near term, analysts say.Since taking office in January, Trump’s maelstrom of import duties against friend and foe alike has rattled diplomats and pushed global markets to the brink of financial meltdown.A screeching halt on further levies for most countries has calmed nerves — for now at least — but there has been no reprieve for China, accused by the US leader of trying to “screw” Washington.Adding to the tensions, talks between the two superpowers on international issues like climate change and opioid addiction seem to have stalled.”Under Trump, China-US ties have sunk to the worst state of affairs short of a fairly large armed conflict,” Shi Yinhong, director of the Center for American Studies at Beijing’s Renmin University of China, said.”Trump has unsheathed his dagger against China at a speed that exceeded many people’s imaginations,” he said.After a flurry of tit-for-tat hikes, the United States now charges tariffs of 145 percent on many products imported from China, with cumulative duties on some goods reaching a staggering 245 percent.A furious Beijing has set a retaliatory toll of 125 percent on goods entering from the United States, and dismissed further rises as pointless.US-China relations are in “effectively a state of economic war”, Susan Thornton, who served as acting top US diplomat for East Asia during Trump’s first administration, told AFP.”China views Trump’s stated intent to… erect a ‘tariff wall against China’ as illegal and an existential threat,” Thornton, now a senior fellow at Yale’s Paul Tsai China Center, said.- No backing down -Just a few weeks ago, multiple reports suggested Beijing and Washington were mulling a face-to-face meeting to coincide with the two leaders’ birthdays in June.But recent events have effectively left those plans dead in the water.Trump’s “rude and unreasonable” behaviour has made any talks in the first half of the year “very unlikely”, according to Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University.Rosemary Foot, a professor and senior research fellow at Oxford University’s politics and international relations department, said Beijing “would want to ensure that there would be some policy deliverables and Xi would be treated with respect”.Trump has approached the trade conflict with a typical mixture of flattery, denigration and bombast — slamming China’s “lack of respect” while hailing Xi as a “smart guy” and talking up a prospective trade deal.Ali Wyne, a senior research and advocacy adviser focusing on US-China ties at the International Crisis Group think tank, said neither Trump nor Xi “will want to convey that he has yielded to the other”.The “likeliest impetus” for talks, he said, would be a scenario where both could claim victory — Trump by his willingness to keep ratcheting up economic pressure, and Xi by showing China’s resilience.Rana Mitter, a professor of US-Asia relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, said a Trump-Xi summit was “still quite possible”, citing the mercurial US leader’s dizzying pivot from threatening war against North Korea in 2017 to meeting Kim Jong Un the following year.”Beijing will not agree to meet if it looks as if they are conceding to the US, so behind-the-scenes diplomacy will likely be necessary,” Mitter said.- Back door shut -Other analysts said Trump’s fiery rhetoric and crippling tariffs had likely laid waste to backdoor talks.Under his predecessor Joe Biden, Washington and Beijing maintained dialogue on the fentanyl crisis, climate change and other issues.Those channels “are moribund now, as far as I can tell, and that makes it difficult to prepare the ground for such a summit”, Oxford’s Foot said.Wu, of Fudan, said Trump’s out-of-hand dismissal of Chinese efforts to curb fentanyl precursor exports and his climate change denial meant the space for lower-track dialogue “has, in practice, already disappeared”.In official pronouncements, China has mocked Trump’s tariffs as a “numbers game” and a “joke” with no economic benefits.Beijing has also sought to cast itself as a defender of fair trade and stability in the face of unwarranted US “bullying”.Experts said China may yet scent opportunity in the face of Trump’s economic carnage.”Trump’s colossally ill-conceived mass alienation of other countries may mean more receptivity for China’s outreach,” said Yale’s Thornton — adding that Beijing was likely conducting “economic triage”.