Can Trump Win an Escalating Trade War Against China?: QuickTake

U.S. President Donald Trump intensified an ongoing trade war by rolling out 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese exports to the U.S., while threatening levies on another $267 billion of Chinese goods. He previously had imposed 25 percent tariffs, which act like a tax on imports, on $50 billion worth of Chinese products, and could soon run out of ways to enact more duties: The total of imposed and threatened tariffs is now $517 billion, yet the U.S. only bought about $505 billion of goods from China last year. China is hitting back with tariffs of varying amounts on U.S. goods. The U.S. also has levied duties on steel and aluminum imports from most countries, including allies Canada, Mexico and the European Union, which also reacted with tariffs of their own. It adds up to an all-out trade war, one that risks gumming up global supply chains, raising consumer prices, stalling economic growth and tying the World Trade Organization in knots. What’s less clear is whether it will end the way Trump wants.

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 retaliation by other countries, both threatened and enacted, meet this definition. But so do centuries of protectionist skirmishes by numerous countries in countless sectors. What makes this a full-blown trade war are Trump’s singling out of China for retaliation, the tit-for-tat actions by the U.S. and its closest allies over metals tariffs, and 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.