U.S. Vs. China: Trade War.

    United States Vs China: Trade War

          This article by Colin Dwyer of NPR describes the escalating trade war between the United States and China. This year Beijing described it as "the largest trade war in economic history." The weapons of this trade war are not nuclear (thankfully) but economic tariffs. The article goes onto explain how the Trump administration has increased tariffs imposed on Chinese goods and China has in turn increased the amount of tariffs imposed on the United States.

          When I first read this article I had to remind myself just what a tariff was, and for anyone else who might be wondering -according to google's dictionary- a tariff is: a tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports. In other words, when a company in the United States wants to buy some Steel from China, the United States can impose a tariff of a given percentage to be added onto the purchasing price. In theory the intent of a tariff is to encourage domestic growth, in the previous example, the United States would tax the cheaper Chinese steel to discourage businesses from buying China's steel and to instead purchase steel produced in the United States, thus growing the domestic economy. The result is not good for China's GDP on a supply and demand economic model, and thus they retaliate by imposing tariffs on our coal for example. 

         The article details dollar amounts (in the billions) and specific products which have tariffs imposed on them.



https://www.npr.org/2018/08/23/641157424/u-s-and-china-impose-fresh-tariffs-as-trade-war-escalates

http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/ae/ag/201807/20180702763232.shtml