As the first salvos of the trade war start to burst in mid-air, it’s not clear whether President Trump has the stomach for the fight.

Gone was all the bravado about how economic fist-fights are “good, and easy to win” when the market was bowled over by Chinese retaliatory tariffs Wednesday morning. The Dow Jones industrial average was plunging a significant bit, but an incredulous president was still insisting that “we are not in a trade war with China.”