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From @ChadBown and colleagues: China has responded to the Trump trade war by CUTTING tariffs on other countries. This is clever, and hurts Trump's push in two ways 1/ piie.com/blogs/trade-in…
One is straight economics: in addition to straight retaliation against U.S. exports, China is cutting into U.S. competitive advantage in everything from lobsters to soybeans by making it easier for U.S. competitors to sell 2/
The other is diplomatic. There are a lot of serious critics of Chinese trade policy, who advocated a common front by other countries to put pressure on the Chinese. But China is in effect extending an olive branch to the rest of the world 3/
Meanwhile Trump is slapping tariffs or threatening to do so against just about everyone, from India to Canada. So this is turning into America against the world, which is a trade war we're a lot less likely to "win" (whatever that might mean) 4/
