Can China’s stimulus response offset Trump’s tariffs?

China’s ambitious “around 5%” growth target this year increasingly has a Donald Trump problem.

Every time the US president raises tariffs for mainland goods — 145%, at least for now — he makes it harder for Xi Jinping to avoid Beijing’s fate in 2022 and 1990. Those are the only two times in the last 35 years that China missed its gross domestic product target.

Yet there’s every reason to think Xi can pull off the seemingly impossible in 2025 so long as his Communist Party marshals a dual-focused response to Trump’s one-man tariff arms race.

The first is a burst of well-targeted stimulus to offset epically strong headwinds zooming China’s way. The second is incentivizing Xi’s 1.4 billion-plus people to save less and spend more.