The so-called trade war between the United States and China has nothing to do with trade, “it has everything to do with China emerging as a rising world power,” according to an author and political commentator in Chicago.

Stephen Lendman told Press TV on Saturday that the United States is attempting “to prevent China from overtaking the US as a dominant world nation.”

Lendman was commenting on the ongoing US-China trade dispute. On Friday, US President Donald Trump said that he has not agreed to roll back tariffs on Chinese goods, dampening the optimism about a possible resolution to a bitter trade conflict.

“They’d like to have a rollback. I haven’t agreed to anything,” Trump told reporters on Friday before departing the White House for Georgia. “China would like to get somewhat of a rollback, not a complete rollback because they know I won’t do it.”

He claimed that China wanted to make a deal more than he did, adding that the American tariffs were generating “billions of dollars” for US treasury.

“I’m very happy right now. We’re taking in billions of dollars,” he said.

Trump’s remarks came after Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson Gao Feng said on Thursday that China and the United States have “agreed to remove the additional duties imposed on each other’s products in different phases after they make progress” in striking a trade deal.

Lendman said, “Trump calls himself a tariff man. I don’t think he really understands what tariffs are all about. What is really important in the US’s relation with China that the so-called trade war between the US and China has nothing to do with trade — nothing to do with trade. How about that? It has everything to do with China emerging as a rising world power, economically, industrially, technologically, militarily, and the US agenda about China is to marginalize the country, to weaken it, to isolate it, to prevent China from overtaking the US as a dominant world nation.”

“The US does the same things with other nations. This is what the US is doing with Iran. Iran is a smaller country geographically and by GDP than China but it’s the same policy with Iran. The tactics differ country by country but the policy is the same. The US wants to get rid of all sovereign independent countries. It wants to make them client states, vassal states. It wants to control them. Control their resources, exploit their populations – the same thing with all nations, independent or others,” he said.

“Well, others are basically US colonies. European countries are US colonies. They are not called that officially but that’s the way they are. We can see it from the way the Europe deals with Iran on the JCPOA. They cannot do anything on their own without asking Washington for permission. That’s a very good definition of a colony,” he added.

European states have reiterated their determination to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), irrespective of the US withdrawal from the agreement.

But the European signatories to the JCPOA — Germany, France Britain — have so far failed to uphold their commitments.

They have expressed vocal support for the deal, but failed to provide meaningful economic incentives as required under the nuclear agreement.

The Europeans have already missed a 60-deadline set by Tehran, prompting Iran to go for the second phase of cutting its commitments on July 7, which marked the start of a second such deadline for them.