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From: ltlee1@hotmail.com (ltlee1)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china,alt.politics.usa
Subject: Trade Wars Are Easy to Lose..Disadvantage US
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2025 19:03:23 +0000
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From ForeignAffairs
"The Trump administration believes that the more you import, the less
you have at stake—that because the United States has a trade deficit
with China, importing more Chinese goods and services than China does
U.S. goods and services, it is less vulnerable. This is factually wrong,
not a matter of opinion. ...

To the degree that the bilateral trade balance predicts which side will
“win” in a trade war, the advantage lies with the surplus economy, not
the deficit one. China, the surplus country, is giving up sales, which
is solely money; the United States, the deficit country, is giving up
goods and services it does not produce competitively or at all at home.
Money is fungible: if you lose income, you can cut back spending, find
sales elsewhere, spread the burden across the country, or draw down
savings (say, by doing fiscal stimulus). China, like most countries with
overall trade surpluses, saves more than it invests—meaning that it, in
a sense, has too much savings. The adjustment would be relatively easy.
There would be no critical shortages, and it could replace much of what
it normally sold to the United States with sales domestically or to
others.

Countries with overall trade deficits, like the United States, spend
more than they save. In trade wars, they give up or reduce the supply of
things they need (since the tariffs make them cost more), and these are
not nearly as fungible or easily substituted for as money. Consequently,
the impact is felt in specific industries, locations, or households that
face shortages, sometimes of necessary items, some of which are
irreplaceable in the short term. Deficit countries also import
capital—which makes the United States more vulnerable to shifts in
sentiment about the reliability of its government and about its
attractiveness as a place to do business.

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."