China needs what we sell them—food. We don’t need what they sell us, because there are plenty of other good suppliers for all the crap—not so for the ag products depending on the year.
In a few years that could change.
For now people can switch suppliers. I used to dismantle plants and set them up in Mexico, then the Chinese miracle took over and production shifted, they were doing the impossible, cost seemed no object.
But lots was crap—but they wouldn’t even blink at sending a whole other shipment for free if the first was rejected. Many businesses cannot operate that way, and production shifted back to Mexico, and elsewhere, places where comm is easier and quicker, and expectations are met the first time.
Now there are many places that can, and do, compete with China for the things we buy. We will hurt China if we don’t buy because nobody else can absorb the production—unless they smuggle it all in through other countries, like they are now doing. But then someone else takes a cut.
We can hurt China, and they can hurt us much less, unless we really burn other global bridges. China is not too smart, and especially not too bright. They love brute force, gambling, and crime. They will go down like the idiots they are, unless they can convince all their expats to support the fatherland.
WHY do we want to hurt China? Because they have taken advantage of us for so long that turnabout is now considered fair play. Yes they did it with the help of certain US people, but they need to know that those people are gone, and accept the new situation—unless what they want is to take advantage and not trade honestly with someone who doesn’t respond to their brute force tactics—and even if they would want to trade honorably, their ridiculous adherence to their quasi-Klingon code of conduct will prevent them from doing so, because they are stuck in a centuries-old feudal mindset.
We are advanced FAR beyond China, maybe far beyond any development of which their culture is capable. Yes I have seen some of their new tech, but it’s meaningless. I’m talking culturally, socially, intellectually.
Either we shift sourcing and hurt China, or we get tariffs—and if we get them, that proves that people here are willing to pay them. It’s a win-win, unless actual demand for those products decreases or disappears—and even in that situation only a limited number of US middlemen would be affected, the rest of us would probably end up with better lives, and smaller landfills.
I say good for tariffs, too much is concentrated in China anyway. I personally buy essentially nothing produced in China except this phone. Even my training flats are made in Vietnam—which is a GREAT place compared to China.