Trade War, Redux

Here we go again. Trump announced today that starting next month, the United States will impose a 10 percent tariff on another $300 billion worth of goods coming in from China.

Trump made the announcement in a tweet, naturally:

And the White House later released a press statement, which was really just a big Trump tweet-thread unroll:

The U.S. previously imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of imports from China, primarily on industrial goods. CNN reports that these new tariffs would impact consumer imports like toys, sneakers, and iPhones, which “could hit US consumers harder than the earlier rounds.”

So, that’s not good, unless you like spending over $1K on a cell phone. Also not good: the stock market fell significantly after Trump dropped the tariff bomb, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average knocking out a 300-point gain.

Trump initially said back in June that he’d hold off on imposing future tariffs on China, but it seems he’s changed his mind. The U.S. and China met in Shanghai for trade talks this week—talks Trump called “constructive,” but who knows what he thinks that means—hence the Dow spike.

Apparently, China has not sufficiently fulfilled its promise to buy more of our agricultural products, and Trump claims they’ve also failed to stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., a stipulation he says he got Chinese President Xi Jinping to agree to. Though I’d wager this is more about winning the trade war than sparing the nation any fentanyl deaths, especially since Trump’s proven a couple of times that he likes to wield tariffs as punishment when he doesn’t get exactly what he wants.