The economic concept of "opportunity cost" must be understood, or there must be a rudimentary understanding of.

The story so far, is that the USA imports more goods from China (thereby USA have a trade deficit with China), it is able to tariff more goods. Hence in their minds they have more leverage to strike a deal where more US demands will be satisfied.

The Chinese finally made a move. They offered to buy $1 trillion dollars worth of US goods over a 6 year period (that happens to coincide with Prez Trump term in office).

So the outcome if there is a trade deal, all tariffs are lifted and Chinese goods still imported into USA have tariffs removed, while China buys $1 trillion dollars of US goods.

The outcome if there is no trade deal, is that that the tariffs on Chinese good imported into USA increase, China maintains it current boycott of soyabeans, and this $1 trillion offer is removed from the table. That $1 trillion is the opportunity cost. Here this appears to be a real cost. It is right there in front of you, and you did not want it. In this light, the USA is not bigger than China. This is textbook economics, the opportunity cost.

All the other issues, are not important to the Chinese, and it is a can of worms because agreement to that would be impossible just on a practical level. Such as the Americans want a part of the business to Made In China 2025. But if they ban some high tech component, which they are prone to do, then that is meaningless essentially. There is no point in discussing any of that. They can enforce IP more, but that is about it.

Actually, opening up of the financial sector to American firms, can be interpreted in terms of opportunity costs. If there is a deal, then China lets in some US financial company. No deal means US financial company losses that, and that is opportunity cost.

In short, the Americans think they have more bullets because they are the side who buys more so they have more targets to tariff. However, China once they put that $1 trillion dollar offer on the table, shows how much future business is available. They can take it or leave it, but as we can see and intuitively sense that the opportunity costs are real bullets too in this trade war.

Plus the political considerations that if the soybean boycott persists, Trump probably won't survive.