"In short, the U.S. economy will suffer enormously in a large-scale trade war with China, which the current levels of Trump-imposed tariffs, at more than 100 percent, surely constitute if left in place. In fact, the U.S. economy will suffer more than the Chinese economy will, and the suffering will only increase if the United States escalates. The Trump administration may think it’s acting tough, but it’s in fact putting the U.S. economy at the mercy of Chinese escalation.
The United States will face shortages of critical inputs ranging from basic ingredients of most pharmaceuticals to inexpensive semiconductors used in cars and home appliances to critical minerals for industrial processes including weapons production. The supply shock from drastically reducing or zeroing out imports from China, as Trump purports to want to achieve, would mean stagflation, the macroeconomic nightmare seen in the 1970s and during the COVID pandemic, when the economy shrank and inflation rose simultaneously. In such a situation, which may be closer at hand than many think, the Federal Reserve and fiscal policymakers are left with only terrible options and little chance of staving off unemployment except by further raising inflation."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trade-wars-are-easy-lose
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