The Chinese somehow believe that they can conduct a trade war with the United States and win. Impossible!

President Donald Trump threatened to escalate the ongoing trade war Monday with additional tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, reports BizPac Review.

“I directed the United States Trade Representative to identify $200 billion worth of Chinese goods for additional tariffs at a rate of 10 percent,” the relevant White House statement read.

These tariffs would be in addition to the “25 percent tariffs on $50 billion of goods from China that contain industrially significant technologies” the administration imposed on China last Friday as punishment for years of intellectual property theft and unfair trade practices.

Rather than change course, China responded with its own tariffs. Beijing immediately retaliated by imposing a reciprocal 25 percent on hundreds of American products with an estimated worth of roughly $50 billion.

This is not a wise maneuver by the Chinese who are fighting a battle they cannot win.

I have been in favor of import tariffs for a very long time as a means to level the foreign trade playing field, which has been unfair to America for decades.

Long before President Trump was on the scene and import tariffs were again a viable means of forcing fairness in foreign trade, I advocated an aggressive tariff policy to prevent the hemorrhaging of jobs and wealth from America to its trading partners, which I explained in a 2013 article, It is time To Stop Being Stupid!

I understand that Xi doesn’t like the new and improved United States. He much preferred the old America of President Trump’s predecessors, who were asleep at the wheel, allowing the Chinese, et al., to rape the American economy at the expense of the US manufacturing base, meaning a loss of jobs at home and a transfer of wealth from the United States to China and our other partners in lopsided trade.

Make no mistake about it, President Trump’s tariff policies are returning those jobs and wealth back to We the People, and it is making trade partners like China squirm. They have very much to lose. In fact, everything!

China depends greatly on access to the US consumer market, the most valuable thing in the history of the world. The more Xi retaliates, the more President Trump is likely to continue turning the spigot off until the Chinese economy collapses.

What does America have to lose in a trade war with China? Nothing! In fact, we will only gain. We will gain jobs and continued growth of our GDP with across the board attendant rises in all sectors of the economy from job growth, higher wages, a resurrected and invigorated manufacturing base, market confidence, consumer confidence, and, very importantly, mushrooming tax revenue which could (and very likely) result in a further reduction in corporate and individual taxes.

Bottom line: The US economy can stand alone. The Chinese economy cannot, as it is dependant upon export and won’t survive without it.

Sure, this is isolationism. So, what? Do We the People owe the world a free lunch? Hell no! Enough of that. America first!

“China, a responsible and reliable major trading nation, hates to be engaged in a trade war with the United States, knowing that it would be a lose-lose game for both,” the state-run Xinhua News Agency argued Saturday. “But this does not mean that Beijing is going to sit quietly in the face of Washington’s planned unilateral tariffs. China has to fight back forcefully so as to safeguard the interests of the nation and its people.”

As China did not get the president’s message the first time, he is now threatening China with tougher tariffs. “These tariffs,” the White House said Monday, “will go into effect if China refuses to change its practices, and also if it insists on going forward with the new tariffs that it has recently announced.” The administration argued that the “latest action by China clearly indicates its determination to keep the United States at a permanent and unfair disadvantage.”

“The trade relationship between the United States and China must be more equitable,” the statement further explained.

Several rounds of trade talks in Washington and Beijing have failed to produce results acceptable to both parties, and now it appears that a simple trade spat is spiraling into a major trade war.

Xi is playing a very dangerous game, a game he cannot win. He should accept President Trump’s leveling of the trade playing field and move on.