>>Trades wars in general are costly (and in this case unnecessary). Only thing its going to accomplish is tanking the stock market and costing the USA citizens a whole lot of money. Everything comes from China now -- even that tag on your stuff that says "made in America" was probably made in China lol. Spending less money on the war machine and military would sure go a long ways though. First thing I would do is cut our military defense budget in half -- which would still put us waaay ahead of everyone else.
>
>The phrase "trade war" is hyperbole.
>If I reduce my prices to put a competitor out of business - that's competition, not a trade war.
>China has been cleaning our clocks by not allowing US products into their markets.
>Trump is trying to get things on an even basis.
>What's wrong with that?

The way he is going about it is stupid though -- the only harm it's doing is to us, not China....sure their GDP might maybe drop a tiny bit if we are buying less stuff do to increased costs - but meanwhile we are going to pay 25% more for almost everything we buy? And what happened to all the conservative republicans that have always been against tariffs? Now all of a sudden it's ok? Hypocrisy of the GOP is at the point of being just blatantly ridiculous now. Meanwhile that market (China) is pretty much closed to U.S. exporters - so farmers, chemical makers and others are going to suffer greatly.

>But there's something else going on here.
>During the 1970's Chrysler was in serious financial trouble and the US government bailed them out because it was militarily necessary to have that kind of manufacturing capacity.
>By allowing Apple to move over a million manufacturing jobs to China we've put this country at risk militarily.

I don't see the connection between manufacturing jobs in China to a military risk to the USA. - perhaps you can expand on this for me?
And really - one way to look at it is that if our unemployment rate is at a supposed all-time-low -- who cares? Apparently we don't need those jobs.

>I agree about the military spending.
>It's whacky.
>Build bridges and roads, not aircraft carriers.

Right - we for sure see eye to eye on this one Bill. I'd rather see money spent on bridges, roads, eduction, green energy than weapons. I think the new z-generation of young folks see this too, and with the huge numbers of them that there are, perhaps they can move us towards this direction in the future. I have given up all hope of the current establishment politicians (with a handful of exceptions) doing anything for the people they actually represent.