A Trade War is not War

If I say to you “Within 24 hours of the U.S. publishing its list, China drew its sword, and with the same strength and to the same scale, counterattacked quickly, fiercely and with determination,” you have an image in your head of a real battle, not harsh words over a negotiating table.  Reuters has a story on that today, but it is really about how the Chinese press is used to stoke up a domestic population and get them prepared for some pain in the process.  After all, it is war.  In war we have to make sacrifices for the state.

China says it has never backed down from a trade war in the past, and will not back down from this one either.  In fact, the terms are very precise here.  They won’t back down, but they will back off.  The last time we accused them of stealing intellectual property from the US, they did actually cut down on the amount of that theft.  They didn’t cut it out, just backed off.  They have made trade concessions before, especially when the US brought actions against them in the WTO.  But like the promises they make to the UN every time they vote for a sanction against Iran, it will not take them long to forget that promise and go back to what they are doing.  They try to find out how we know what they are doing, then change their rules to fit the new situation.  The Chinese have seen this coming for years.