The point is to inflict pain on the aggressor; in general no-one ‘wins’ a trade war, and the goal is to make things bad enough for the aggressor that they back

The point is to inflict pain on the aggressor; in general no-one ‘wins’ a trade war, and the goal is to make things bad enough for the aggressor that they back down. In this case, the aggressor inflicted much pain on _itself_, before the tariffs really even went into operation, that it has already partially backed down, but that’s kind of unusual that it would happen so quickly.