Just when US equity futures were finally starting to move higher after Dow futures had lingered around the -500 level for most of the morning, President Trump doubled-down on his antagonistic stance toward Beijing, tweeting that the US was done losing "500 billion dollars" a year in trade to China.

The message was clear: Trump isn't backing down from his threats to hike tariffs and impose new ones, even after sending global markets into paroxysms with a series of tweets on Sunday.

The United States has been losing, for many years, 600 to 800 Billion Dollars a year on Trade. With China we lose 500 Billion Dollars. Sorry, we’re not going to be doing that anymore! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 6, 2019

Trump latest tweet follows reports that Beijing was still planning to send a trade delegation to the US this week, but that Vice Premier Liu He, the official who has led the Beijing side during the now ten rounds of talks that have been held over the past year, might either delay a trip to Washington by a few days, or not go at all.

It supports the view that, given the market's robust performance since the start of the year, Trump feels he has the latitude to ratchet up the pressure on Beijing, given the strength of the labor market and Q1 GDP.

Put another way: