Donald Trump's latest threats admit the Iran pressure scheme failed and China just put icing on that failure cake. Right, so Donald Trump has just threatened every country trading with Iran with a blanket 25 percent tariff on all their business with the United States if they don’t stop. He’s stamping his tiny orange feet now because regime change isn’t happening. He botched it. And the idea that this pressure campaign is controlled, targeted, or ever going to work is for the birds, because it always does. People were told that Iran was wobbling, that the rest of the world could watch from a safe distance with their feet up and popcorn in hand as the Ayatollah’s run for the hills. Well Trump falling back on tariffs again blows that sky high. When you start threatening third countries instead of the target, you’re not tightening the screws, you’ve lost your grip. And that’s where the confidence falls apart. The confidence that regime change was “underway”. The confidence that tariffs are leverage rather than self-harm. The confidence that Washington still decides who trades with whom without consequences when the likes of China are calling it out, Iranian trade now an even bigger issue for them, also thanks to Trump. So this shift doesn’t project strength, it advertises Trump’s frustration. That is now out in the open, and as such, everyone else stops playing along and starts planning around it. Right, so Donald Trump has announced a blanket threat: any country doing business with Iran will face a 25 percent tariff on “any and all” business it does with the United States. The White House account has pushed the statement out, and the wording is the point, because it is not a targeted sanction, not a narrow penalty on a named firm, not even a defined list of goods, it is a floating punishment aimed at whole countries. That is what people do when the pressure on the target has not delivered what was promised, so the pressure gets sprayed outward until someone else screams first, and you can dress it up as “strength” rather than what it is, which is escalation borne out of frustration and impatience. Little Donnie botched it.