Over-simplified.

Many of the goods you enjoy have costs that are dependent on various imported imputs.

This is a contest of who will blink first. It's a shrewd negotiating tactic but most don't see the bigger picture.

Here is how i see this playing out. The marginal cost of this tit-for-tat is higher for the Chinese than it is for us. It is higher precisely because the trade is so lob sided favoring Chinese producers. The US market is massive and the tariffs thus far are small potatoes. Their strategy is to target Republican states/industries to basically turn the voters on the elected officials and pressure them to put an end to these tariffs. I think if Trump pushes hard enough he will break their resolve and they will be forced to come to the table. I think the end goal here is to negotiate better trade deals from our side. The Chinese make it extremely hard for US companies to expand in China. The Chinese have been stealing our intellectual property for decades and essentially duplicating our tech when we spent the money to develop it. Most recently they've been trying to buy out some of our top tech firms that could be a threat to our national security. I don't see enough people talking about this considering the ramifications down the line can be massive. Can you imagine if all of the chips used in our military infrastructure were built by Chinese companies like Huawei?

Some examples:

https://www.reuters.com/article/xcerra-ma-hubeixinyan/u-s-blocks-chip-equipment-maker-xcerras-sale-to-chinese-state-fund-idUSL2N1QD01X
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lattice-m-a-canyonbridge-trump/trump-bars-chinese-backed-firm-from-buying-u-s-chipmaker-lattice-idUSKCN1BO2ME

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 4 2018 12:09pm

Free trade only works if both sides are on equal footing and both sides play fair. That hasn't happened with any* country we've done business with.

Obviously trade is beneficial (and you call me the ignoramus). The question isn't about the value of trade, it's about the value of free trade.

China has been in an active trade war since the beginning, while we've had our hands tied behind our backs.

This post was edited by FGdumpster on Apr 4 2018 12:19pm

Of course, you're correct. But the economy doesn't stop functioning because some portion of inputs cost 20% more.

yes. the country that lies about their own poverty levels, human rights violations, and are generally less concerned with their fellow citizen, is going to break because it hurts their lowest class, against a group of entitled tide pod eating idiots with already higher GDP's and 10x the level of philanthropy and charity.

you people never cease to make me laugh.... the whole "china cant take what we can take" argument is snake oil you kids all drink. its pathetic.



who said or even implied it does?

This post was edited by thesnipa on Apr 4 2018 12:21pm

would it be as bad as having a hostile nation actively meddling with your elections, and the beneficiary of that intervention doing everything in their power to obstruct an investigation into it?

apart from that, i mostly agree with your evaluation, including the legitimate concerns against china, even though the current approach might just be the most unsophisticated and outright stupid way to go about it.
obviously a trade war hurts the nation with the trade surplus towards the other nation more, but just as obvious is that it will hurt BOTH economies significantly, and by extension ALL markets to a certain degree - and if you think the american populace will put up with more to see their highly unpopular leader score a propaganda victory you're clearly mistaken.
also, only a fool would delude themselves into assuming that it won't be the consumers who will bear the brunt of it...

This post was edited by fender on Apr 4 2018 12:27pm

Lol at the stupidity of your response. The tariffs being placed don't hurt the Chinese plebeians but the Chinese producers who are the oligarchs and the upper echelons of the country. Sounds to me like you know very little about the Chinese economy and how fragile their governance system is. The masses were appeased by steadily increasing standards of living provided by high growth. Now that the growth is slowing down and there's a threat of a trade war from China's biggest market, they are certainly more worried of how the populace will respond in case of a recession.

^this.

China has much more to lose, and not only because of their trade deficit.

Yeah this is why China is vulnerable to being bullied. They valuable stability over all else and for good reason, their biggest fear is collapse and balkanization and everyone knows this is why they won't give an inch on taiwan. China knows their economic engine is slowing and their population is aging and they're in for a big age bubble popping as they become a society of senior citizens and so they've been making all the best investments and infrastructure they could to support a transition into a service-based low production society. The prospect of a trade war jeopardizing their economy is so dangerous that their paper tiger routine is well, paper-thin.

less exportation/importation, environmentalists wins

that would be true if you took raw numbers of the goods being tariff'd and assumed a constant decline in exports across those goods. in reality the gap between US and Chinese producers is so wide on many of the products that it's just a straight up tax with very little reduction in their production. it already costs so much less to be made there that the tariff is a small fraction of the gap to buy american. they've also for years been pumping goods they didnt have buyers for domestically elsewhere, but are seeing more demand from within due to increased standards of living.

i understand there will be a real and uniform reduction in their production. what im saying is that the pain will be felt more here by the average citizen than over there when controlled for standards of living. what im also saying is that the damage to the chinese economy wont be great enough to force the intellectual property and copyright changes that many feel is a realistic end goal for such a tariff policy, thus making the damage we do to both ourselves and them largely worthless. meanwhile the elite in china can manipulate currency and shut down trading at will when it suits them, giving them cards to play over american producers.

i dont think we'll blink first, and i dont think they will blink first. I think we'll both damage our economies in a world wide dick measuring contest until the next POTUS revokes the tariffs and we return to status quo poorer with inflated costs of living. they'll wait it out and so will we. no matter how its played out no one will win, the goals as admirable as they are are unrealistic to expect.