As my colleague Bob Kuttner wrote yesterday, Donald Trump, after starting April like a lion, is going out like a lamb. He has said publicly that tariffs on China will “come down substantially,” with an unnamed aide floating rollbacks as high as 65 percent. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave a similar story at a closed-door meeting hosted by JPMorganChase (why was he delivering market-moving information in secret to bankers?), and publicly at the Institute of International Finance on Tuesday. “There is an opportunity for a big deal here” with China, Bessent said, and “if they want to rebalance [their economy], let’s do it together.”

Wall Street is certainly desperate for any note of conciliation, and Trump saying he has “no intention” of firing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell made them even more ebullient.

But let’s get real.

The proposed tariff cuts would only come as part of negotiations, not unilaterally. (Stocks fell back on that news.) Even a 65 percent cut would still leave a 50 percent tariff on China, which may not change the trading dynamics that likely forced Trump into proposing the reductions. And businesses have seen tariff rates ping-pong multiple times just this month, making it impossible to plan or invest.

Perhaps most important, China now knows it has a paper tiger across the negotiating table, and can hold out for the best deal. That would be true even if Trump were still ranting on Truth Social every hour about breaking China’s will—because the Chinese can read the news like anyone else. More important, they can see what’s happening at their own ports.