tariff concerns should be discussed via WTO, not unilateral sanctions.
otherwise all this "rules based order" is not worth paper it is written on
In general, the US would introduce retaliatory tariffs in that scenario; the game theory of the situation basically requires that.
Despite popular belief, the CCP is also not actually completely immune to public discontent (it often seems to be really quite scared of it), and would likely be willing to kick off a major trade war, as it would cause price increases.
You can see the effects of the free market in many industries which have been decimated by globalization.
We used to be able to get a manufacturing job which would provide for a family, but decided it was okay to allow big corps to use slave labor on the other side of the planet and just ship everything across the world (not great for carbon emissions). Just look at the rust belt.
It’s not a bad idea to say that we should have the free market stop at our border. Other countries don’t play by the same rules that we do and can even have entire industries propped up by a foreign government in order to take up market share.
Removing industry from an area brings nothing but misery to the people who live there. Are you suggesting that some sort of communism should have been implemented in the rust belt where we give these people free money or something?
The Chinese market is way larger than the US one, they have everything they need to lift themselves out of poverty by building things for themselves. The US became the richest country in the world by building everything here and reaping the rewards with greatly increased prosperity.
There is no reason to send all our good paying jobs to the other side of the world, and ship all goods across literally the entire planet, the process of which emits and insane amount of C02, just so that the owners of mega corporations can make a few extra dollars per unit.
