Quote:Prior to the round of tariffs imposed this month, Trump’s tariffs applied to 12 percent of U.S. imports, and retaliatory tariffs imposed by other countries applied to only 9 percent of our exports, according to calculations by Ernie Tedeschi of the investment research firm Evercore ISI. These small percentages are why the economy has remained good, even though the president’s trade policy is generally bad for the economy. The question weighing on the financial markets in recent weeks is: What if those trade actions keep getting bigger, to the point where they matter a lot?The Trade War Is Getting Big Enough to Hurt the Economy
Quote:The conflict between China and the United States is a competition between two different civilisations and value systems. While the trade imbalance between the two countries continues to make headlines, it actually means little to either. For China, the role of net export contribution to economic growth has been negative in most years since 2008. For the US, a trade deficit is inevitable when it consumes 30 per cent of the world’s products but produces only 13 per cent. Both Washington and Beijing must know this: the dispute is about much more than trade.Opinion | US-China trade war is really a clash of civilisations and ideologies | South China Morning Post
Quote:On Tuesday, after China responded to the latest round of tariffs with fresh punitive measures of its own, the president claimed that “Tariffs have rebuilt our Steel Industry” (fact-check: false); that “Our great Patriot Farmers will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of what is happening now” (fact-check: false, and weirdly Soviet); and that we will be “moving jobs back to the USA” (fact-check: false again!).Trump’s Trade War Just Went from “Easy to Win” to “5,000 Years” of Hell | Vanity Fair