This isn't a typical tit-for-tat trade war that gets worked out at the negotiating table. Several current and former Trump aides want to outright topple the Chinese Communist Party. Quoting Steve Bannon in an NPR piece published today:

"I think ultimate success is regime change ... the goal is quite simply to break the back of this totalitarian mercantilist economic society."

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/07/719947020/inside-the-white-ho...

The other thing going on, alluded to in the same article, is attacking China is red meat to Trump's base (42% of the American population, according to a recent poll). He's built it up into one of the primary reasons behind the collapse of American manufacturing. If the China bogeyman goes away with a splashy deal, will the base be satisfied? Or will something else have to be dialed up to replace it as a political and trading punching bag?