US takes another step toward trade-conflict with China

US penalizes Chinese tires, infuriating Beijing

"For the Chinese government, the tire dispute threatens an economic relationship crucial to China's economic growth. There was speculation before the decision that new tariffs could produce public pressure on Beijing to retaliate, potentially leading to a trade war."

Domestic pressures quite reasonably force economic actors to reign-in foreign outflows and invest internally, which by definition only increases the domestic pressures on those foreign economies that are being shunned, so they retaliate in kind, and things can often spiral out of control.  That's the basic idea behind a 'trade war'.

At least, that's how it's tended to happen in the past.  But after decades of globalism, in which countless so-called "American" corporations are now de facto Chinese (or other) manufactures -- and thus may find themselves on the receiving end of possible trade-tariffs & sanctions -- the potential for a looming trade war becomes a lot more, shall we say, 'multi-faceted'. 

All this has corporate-globalist economic pundits pushing the message that this time it can be different, that this time the US administration can dig us all out of a financial hole without reigning-in foreign spending and increasing domestic investments in jobs, manufacturing and the like.  And it's easy to imagine that the keystone to any "growth-without-reducing-foreign-spending" strategy almost certainly relies on printing more money out of thin air instead.

The argument on the free-trade side also evidently goes like this:

"The biggest hit would be felt by American consumers who now buy 50-dollar Chinese-made tires and can't afford U.S. brands that cost as much as 150 dollars, many distributors warned."

Which really just opens up the old "No, I can't afford $150-dollar tires because my job was shipped to China" argument, and the circular reasoning continues....

At any rate, China is certainly "protecting" it's own resources, stockpiling oil and other basic commodities, and most recently hoarding their rare-earth resource metals. 

And it's going to be a real test of this Democratic administration's true mettle, because a Democratic President has to be 'pro-worker' and 'anti-foreign-corporations', doesn't he?  Isn't that, like, in the Democrat Party Oath of Allegiance or something?

And this certainly seems to be one of the more distinctly Democrat-ic actions this administration has embraced. It should be interesting to keep an eye on any future news of trade issues.