We've slapped a three year tariff on tires on China. Is this a good idea?

I made mention of this in another thread but I will say it again. The last year has changed things in this country dramatically. The US is no longer the 800 pound gorilla. So much national wealth, several trillion dollars, just vanished last fall - its gone. The US is still a major player but the world will have several major players of great importance. The new gorilla is China. This country has 4x the people as the US and has an economy that has colossal potential. India is also growing quickly.

As for tariffs on China, it is a very dangerous move. The US can't just throw its power around any more and expect others to bow before us. Part of what got us into the great depression was economic protectionism and excess use of tariffs. The Obama administration basically launched an economic missle at China and I guaranty you, the Chinese aren't going to take it without retaliation. They can certainly do the same with some of our (few) exports there such as cars and jetliners. When it came to real war, the Dems wanted to just talk and talk and negotiate and talk and negotiate and talk before taking any action. It seems to me the Obamas fired that economic missle without any known talk so I have to question the wisdom of it. Unless a lot happened in secret, it would have been far better to convene some negotiations to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

Well, protectionism worries me. I hate kow towing to China simply because they practically own us but... hell... they practically own us! But I don't know enough about it to have any particular insight. Intuitively, it just doesn't seem like a smart move. I hate to do things to back unions if it is just going to piss off our creditors and cause all of us to endure blowback. I suspect they are likely to slam us. But, again, I don't really know. Looking to be educated.

I'm not sure how bad a trade war with China would be.

Our exports to there don't even get close to what we import from there. I don't think it'd be all that hard to find other third world countries to manufacture for us. If what's going on is dumping, then that's something which I believe violates international law, so there ought to be a recourse for that. Why not just go that route first?

I'm actually less worried about a trade war than their pulling in markers.

I think it was a bad hasty decision by Obama. There will be repercussions and I'm not happy we're the ones that will have to pay for his ignorance.

I'm actually less worried about a trade war than their pulling in markers.

And for those that don't understand this, China could suddenly decide to dump their however many trillion dollars of US debt they own. I hope Obama is only trying to pay a favor to the AFL=CIO he spoke to this morning.