Trump Wanted a Trade War. Here’s What One Looks Like

In a two-week span, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered up an array of tariffs against numerous countries, blocked Chinese takeovers of U.S. companies and sought new restrictions on future Chinese investment. Economists are warning that the world is on the verge of an all-out trade war, featuring tit-for-tat reprisals, heated rhetoric and appeals to the World Trade Organization, which may be ill-equipped to respond. If Trump’s trade provocations mushroom out of control, dozens of border-opening trade deals negotiated over several decades could be shoved aside. The prospect of slower economic growth has stock markets worldwide reeling.

The dictionary says it’s “an economic conflict in which countries impose import restrictions on each other in order to harm each other’s trade.” Trump’s tariffs and the threatened retaliation from other countries meet this definition, but so do centuries of protectionist skirmishes by numerous countries in countless sectors. The recent escalation is stoking fears that Trump has touched off a full-blown trade war by singling out of China for retaliation for intellectual property theft. The quid-pro-quo actions by the U.S. and China over steel tariffs, Trump’s invocation of national security to justify some of his moves -- which could open a Pandora’s Box of similar claims by other nations -- and Trump’s threat to further punish the EU if it imposes counter-duties also add to the trade-war atmospherics.