This has less to do with trade than it does with national security, according to senior administration officials and sources briefed on the president’s thinking:

• U.S. intelligence officials are worried about Hong Kong further deteriorating, and about the risk of the Chinese military overreaching in Hong Kong — and perhaps even in Taiwan.
• Lots of members of Congress care about the U.S. protecting Taiwan from Chinese aggression, and Trump has enraged Beijing by increasing military sales to the Taiwanese from the Obama era.
• And national security adviser John Bolton is a strong advocate for Taiwan.

Trump had been resisting chastising Chinese President Xi Jinping over his human rights abuses and his treatment of Hong Kong protesters. But he’s inched further toward criticizing the Chinese than he normally would in recent days.

• Trump even hinted the Chinese wouldn’t get their trade deal unless they peacefully resolved the situation in Hong Kong — a move that pleasantly surprised China hawks.

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper visited Australia earlier this month, they delivered an unequivocal message to senior Australian officials: The U.S. plans to forcefully push back against China’s destabilizing behavior in the Asia-Pacific.

• Some left those meetings with the impression that the U.S. was serious about confronting China militarily.
• Between the lines: This visit was important for the signals Pompeo and Esper sent, but didn’t get as much U.S. press attention as it deserved. (See Bloomberg's Aug. 4 story here.)

The bottom line: So if not a China trade deal, what then is left to juice Trump’s economy and stave off recession?

• Tax cuts? Not going to happen.
• Infrastructure? Not going to happen.
• Federal Reserve rate cuts? Probably. But how much will these expected cuts actually achieve?

Go deeper: Trump says he is "the chosen one" to take on China in trade war

• "Meehan, who was in Panama in advance of the secretary's visit during the Flores rollout, made the decision to leave government a couple of weeks ago," a senior DHS official told Axios.
• The White House and DHS did not respond to Axios' requests for comment.

Behind the scenes: These growing tensions were exacerbated by what some White House officials saw as DHS’ botched rollout of a new proposal that would reverse the Flores agreement, a decades-old court decision that prevents the government from holding minors in detention for longer than 20 days with their parents, per sources with direct knowledge.

• White House press and communications officials were frustrated with McAleenan for holding a press conference about the new proposal at the Ronald Reagan building, which houses U.S. Customs and Border Patrol's D.C. office, rather than at a location like the White House that would have attracted more media attention, according to senior administration officials.
• "Flores is a huge deal to the president," a senior official said. "This is the underpinning of the whole fight. This just seems to me this is a very important rollout and they ... undersold it at the Reagan Center.
• "[McAleenan] could have been on all the TVs if he wanted to. But not everybody's taking live coverage from the Reagan Center at the last minute. At some point something has got to go right at DHS with their messaging and rollouts."

Trump was also dissatisfied with the coverage of the July ICE raids. Stories from Breitbart and the New York Times that stated that only 35 of the roughly 2,000 migrants ICE targeted were detained angered the president, a source with direct knowledge said. Not long after the raids, Carol Danko, the spokesperson for ICE, was pushed out, White House officials tell us. Danko says she resigned.

• A senior White House official added in a text: “Decision to fire Carol Danko was made by ICE, not WH, although we support whatever they feel is necessary to manage their team. There was disagreement between WH and DHS Comms on how to execute the Flores rollout, but COS ultimately signed off on the plan as executed.”
• However, a source familiar says the decision to remove Danko was made by senior DHS officials, not ICE officials.

The big picture: McAleenan's position at DHS has been fraught for weeks, and it's an open secret within the White House and DHS that Trump prefers acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Ken Cuccinelli and acting Customs and Border Protection director Mark Morgan, who have fiercely defended his immigration policies on TV.

• CNN reported earlier this month that McAleenan was prepared to resign in June and that he had felt "undermined" by subordinate immigration hardliners.
• McAleenan, who Trump has called "an Obama guy," was a career official before becoming a political appointee under Trump.
• "Going from [former DHS Secretary Kirstjen] Nielsen to McAleenan makes no sense," a senior administration official said. "McAleenan doesn’t agree with the president on immigration, and that’s no secret. It’s unclear why he's even still there."

Editor's note: This story has been updated with new details about Danko's removal, and to reflect that McAleenan's position at DHS, not ICE, has been fraught for weeks.

• Trump has publicly alluded to a naval blockade of Venezuela. Earlier this month he answered "Yes, I am" when a reporter asked whether he was mulling such a move. But he hasn't elaborated on the idea publicly.

In private, Trump has expressed himself more vividly, these current and former officials say.

• "He literally just said we should get the ships out there and do a naval embargo," said one source who's heard the president’s comments. "Prevent anything going in."
• "I'm assuming he's thinking of the Cuban missile crisis," the source added. "But Cuba is an island and Venezuela is a massive coastline. And Cuba we knew what we were trying to prevent from getting in. But here what are we talking about? It would need massive, massive amounts of resources; probably more than the U.S. Navy can provide."

Hawkish GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, has a different perspective about the value of a show of military force. "I've been saying for months that when the Venezuelan military sees an American military presence gathering force, this thing ends pretty quickly," he told me.

Behind the scenes: In recent months, an alleged drug lord in President Nicolás Maduro's inner circle has reached out to the White House through intermediaries, according to administration officials and other sources briefed on the outreach.

• Diosdado Cabello, an alleged drug lord with substantial power inside the Venezuelan political and military elite, has been communicating through emissaries with National Security Council official Mauricio Claver-Carone, these sources said. These sources did not know what messages, if any, Claver-Carone had sent back to Cabello through these intermediaries.
• A senior administration official added that members of various centers of power within Venezuela, including Cabello, have been reaching out through emissaries to U.S. government officials.
• Trump administration officials view Cabello as an important power broker, and some say the Venezuelan opposition's April 30 uprising would have succeeded if Cabello had been involved.
• Some State Department officials are concerned about the idea of communicating with an alleged drug lord, per a source familiar with the situation. It's also the case that some administration officials have assessed that Cabello purportedly sending messages is a positive sign and suggests Maduro's circle is gradually cracking.

The big picture: Thus far, Trump has sought to strangle dictator Maduro with escalating sanctions. Senior administration officials say they are focused on diplomacy and economic pressure and have little interest in military options, though they won't rule them out.

• Trump is deeply frustrated that the Venezuelan opposition has failed to topple Maduro — more than 3 months after a failed uprising, and more than 6 months after Trump led the world in recognizing Juan Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.

Trump has had good reason to be frustrated, current and former officials said. For the first year and a bit of his presidency, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and chief of staff John Kelly collaborated to ignore or stymie what they judged to be dangerous requests from Trump. This included, in Mattis' case, a request for military options to topple Maduro, according to sources with direct knowledge of Trump's unfulfilled asks.

• Trump would berate his former national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, asking him why he hadn't produced the Venezuela military options he'd requested. But McMaster wasn't the obstacle to producing the options for Venezuela; it was Mattis, according to sources with direct knowledge.
• McMaster grew so exasperated with Mattis that around September 2017, he sent him a memo saying the president had requested new options for Venezuela.
• In the classified memo, which has never been reported on until now, McMaster gave Mattis a deadline to present the military options, according to sources familiar with the memo's contents. Mattis ignored the memo and blew past the deadline, these sources said.
• This dynamic changed once John Bolton and Mike Pompeo took over.

The bottom line: Trump has no interest in committing U.S. ground troops to Venezuela, according to senior administration officials, but he has told them to keep piling pressure on Maduro and to look for creative ways to help Guaidó force Maduro out of power.