This is the problem with racist people. They honestly believe their racism is factual and scientific. This trade war is deeply rooted in racism. Trump genuinely believes that people of European descent are economically, intellectually and technologically superior to Chinese people, and the trade war was meant to take away from the Chinese whatever unfair advantage they deceptively acquired by abusing the good nature of the USA.
It was a similar story when Biden put restrictions on China thinking that it will halt their semiconductor industry and stop them from producing semiconductors past 14nm feature size. American Exceptionalism is one hell of a drug.