...tariffs and the threat of them will have some of the positive impacts the Administration hopes they will. America is a huge economic power in today's world and certainly has a lot of leverage and economic cards to play here. Any country or market where America buys a lot of goods is vulnerable to changes in American trade policy, and they may very well want to find ways to open their markets to more American goods in the interest of their own market stability. That could be a good thing for segments of the American economy.
But the truth is also that it will not work out in exactly the way anyone predicts. Much like the weather, the global economy is a complex system of inputs and outputs that are linked in a myriad of ways that no one fully understands. The impact of changing those inputs and outputs are only known after they change--sometimes long after.
One thing that is predictable, however: the rich will get richer. And it is entirely unclear if that will mean anything positive for the average American or not. China did not really become a global powerhouse because of U.S. trade policy. Its rise was driven by their focus on creating a manufacturing base with access to both cheap labor and raw materials that was attractive to American companies seeking maximum profit. Corporations didn't lobby writ large to keep jobs in America--quite the opposite.
So now one can easily see a scenario where the American manufacturer with a patent on a product they've designed and contracted a manufacturing facility in China to produce on their behalf gets new markets opened up for them by American trade policy, and they just divert more of those same products made in the same Chinese factories to their newfound global markets rather than bothering to even ponder opening an American manufacturing facility.
So, we may not know how this will play out, but we can fairly easily predict who the biggest winners will be no matter what happens.
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