Consider wrote:
But how will China feed a couple billion people without buying our grain? How will China handle the increase in unemployment? In my opinion, the impact on China will be much worse.
Both countries will see increases in prices and loss of jobs. The real question is which country can bear this. The reality is America has had a very good past century which is great for the people but also means that people will have grown soft. This is not meant as an insult but rather a reality. During the Second World War China suffered 15,000,000 casualties, the US less than half a million. China saw its cities destroyed and the Rape of Nanking, the US suffered Pearl Harbor. After the war China entered a civil war which killed a further 8 million. Following that there was the Great Leap Forward, 30 million deaths due to starvation, 2.5 million due to 'violence'. After that there was the Cultural Revolution, 3 million deaths. For the US the greatest stress on society since WW2 was Vietnam, but that did not result in US civilian casualties on American soil.
The Chinese have been brought up in a world where bad times means millions of deaths. For the Chinese the effects of this trade war will be relatively trivial. If 50,000 jobs are lost in the US people will march in the streets and Congress will be in a frenzy worrying about the effect on the November elections. In China politicians will just go back to their siesta - wake me up when 500,000 have died.