Ultimately a major player in this trade war is China and China simply doesn’t have the capacity to weather the storm like the United States does. The United States effectively subsidizes Chinese manufacturers by purchasing cheap shit at prices your average Chinese person can’t afford. This helps drive the cost of consumable goods in China down to a level that is manageable for your average Chinese person making less than 12,000 yuan a month. The only thing the Chinese government can do is directly inject funds into these companies to drive prices down, but they’re already struggling with keeping the yuan from being devalued as is. Their market saturation in other western countries with the money to spend is already tapped and third world nations can’t even afford to pay Chinese prices, much less American.
I won’t even get into the absolute shit show this is going to cause on the Chinese meat production industry, since they purchase an obscene amount of animal feed from the United States. What makes this worse is that there isn’t a feasible alternative nation on the planet for China to purchase animal grains from.
The United States will absolutely hurt from this, and I’m not altogether certain this is a great idea or a bad idea, but I do know the Chinese will hurt more. The CCP is going to have to play ball at some point; I wouldn’t be surprised to see them coming to the table in a few weeks or less. They want to appear strong, but they just can’t let the standard of living in Chinese cities slide any further than it already has.