Going in to the end of the year, Trump is going to be claiming victory in his trade war. The truth is that there are almost never winners in trade wars — but there are losers. And however Trump may try to spin this, he lost 1/
That's certainly how the Chinese see it. Trump tried to bully them; they hung tough; and are basically ending up where they started, buying agricultural products while selling us increasingly sophisticated manufactured goods 2/ nytimes.com/2019/12/14/bus…
One reason is that despite many, many false claims by Trump, US consumers paid the tariffs — which we can see by the fact that Chinese export prices didn't fall 3/ libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/11/who-pa… 
Actually US export prices to China fell more, probably bc the Chinese found it easier to find alternatives to US soybeans etc than we found alternatives to Chinese products 4/
As a result, farmers have suffered, with a number going bankrupt, despite a bailout *twice the size of Obama's auto bailout* 5/ axios.com/trump-trade-wa…
Furthermore, even if we do get a sustained deal — which is still far from certain — the whole episode will have two big long-run costs. First, business uncertainty about capricious policy is here to stay 6/ washingtonpost.com/business/2019/…
Second, the Chinese have learned the same lesson North Korea's Kim learned: Trump talks loudly but carries a small stick, and can be rolled. Trump has made us weak, neither trusted by our allies nor feared by our enemies 7/
Now, Trump may not suffer politically. Elections turn not on how good things are, but on whether they're perceived as getting better. This actually gives politicians an incentive to do stupid things for a while, then stop around a year before the election. Sound familiar? 8/
Oh, one more thing. Trump wimped out early on trade war with Mexico, basically leaving NAFTA intact but trying to stick his name on it. Even so, he ended up having to buy Dem support with concessions to labor 9/ washingtonpost.com/business/econo…
I still think this was a political mistake for Dems. But I could be wrong; apparently Dems got so much that the Mexicans may be balking 10/ reuters.com/article/us-usa…
