For the entirety of his adult life, Donald Trump has been telling people he’s a brilliant businessman—a habit he continued, to great effect, on the campaign trail, assuring voters that he would use his Apprentice-honed skills to strike deals for the U.S. beyond the wildest dreams of his predecessors. One of the areas in which the American people were promised a dazzling display of the maestro in action was on trade with China, a situation the president has likened, with some regularity, to the U.S. being “raped.” In March, Trump’s conviction that we were being screwed by Beijing led him to threaten tariffs on $150 billion in Chinese imports, on top of his steel and aluminum tariffs, unless the China made major changes to its industrial policies. One month later, has China, powerless in the face of Trump’s fearsome negotiating savvy, agreed to the U.S.’s demands? Not exactly!

On Saturday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who is leading the talks with his Chinese counterparts, announced that the U.S. would suspend its tariffs, with China agreeing to “substantially” reduce its $375 billion trade deficit with the U.S. The statement was extremely vague, with the secretary claiming the details would be worked out at a later date, which is never a good sign—as The Washington Post points out, both sides agreed to “strengthen cooperation,” which tends to be diplomatic speak for “jack shit.” There was no mention of intellectual property protections—which Team Trump has said costs the U.S. economy upwards of $600 billion a year—or the administration’s original demand that China agree to stop subsidizing its tech companies. Nor was there any mention of limiting Chinese investment in the U.S. in order to demonstrate to Beijing that if doesn‘t allow U.S. companies to fully operate in China, America won’t be open to its companies, either. There was nary a word about Trump’s signature demand that China cut its trade deficit with the U.S. by $200 billion. And, unsurprisingly, even Trump’s allies are casting the whole thing as a win for Beijing.

“It’s a huge disappointment, given the expectations,” Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, told the Post. “It plays right into Beijing’s hands . . . and is more of the same old failed policies we saw under the Bush and Obama administrations.” Dan DiMicco, a former steel C.E.O. who had been a vocal supporter of Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, tweeted, “Did [the] president just blink? China and friends appear [to] be carrying the day.” Brad Setser, a China expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that given China’s rapidly growing economy and middle class, it’s no surprise the government would say it was keen on buying more U.S. energy and agricultural products, which Team Trump is trying to claim as a win for the U.S. “China has to import a certain amount of energy from someone and needs to import either animal feed or meat to satisfy Chinese domestic demand,” Setser said, adding that what Trump got from China is “the kind of deal that China would be able to offer any U.S. president.” Bob Davis, The Wall Street Journal’s trade reporter, summed up the situation thusly: “Trump administration gets rolled by the Chinese.”

The president, of course, turned to his Twitter feed to push back at the haters, alternately claiming that the U.S. is, in fact, still winning its “easy” trade war:

. . . and blaming the whole thing on Democrats, whom he chided for failing to rein in China in the first place.

Trump’s tantrum appeared to have been sparked in part by his buddies at Fox & Friends, who trashed Mnuchin as “a disaster on trade” who’s “caving like a cheap suit,” and “leaving America out to dry.” Critics of the administration, meanwhile, pointed to the disorganization emanating from the top. “It’s very, very volatile,” Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Post. “Normally, there are different factions, and they both fight within the bureaucratic process for their viewpoints . . . but this is much more freewheeling, and the most volatile person is the president.” Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said the only consistent policy Trump has “is that America is getting a raw deal world, but how to address that raw deal varies day to day and hour to hour.”