[aianus]

There are plenty of good reasons why China deserves tariffs, why not start there as the root cause?

Protectionism, IP theft, banning or heavily restricting US tech firms from operating in (aka exporting to) China, the list goes on.

[simonh]

And if that was the real reason, you’d expect the US to be coordinating with other countries that have the same beef with China. Instead, the US is antagonising them as well.

Trump has been very clear the tariffs are mainly about boosting US manufacturing. It’s not going to work, but that’s what he keeps saying. If it really was about the issues you list, there are plenty of ways to address them in a much more coordinated and effective manner with like minded allies. Instead the US keeps their demands very vague and keeps changing the criteria, to avoid the chance of an actual agreement.

Contrast with the renegotiation of NAFTA. Clear, specific demands in areas they knew would be open to negotiation. In the end, fairly minor updates and a workable deal.

[busymom0]

> It’s not going to work, but that’s what he keeps saying.

So far it has worked very well for the US and China has been suffering. US has been able to create 6 million jobs with 2 million manufacturing jobs alone created since his election. China has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs and a lot of manufacturers are moving away from China and either coming back to US or moving to places like India where IP theft isn't a huge problem.

US economy is also doing very well, GDP growth has beaten all expectations and what not.

[astronautjones]

> So far it has worked very well for the US and China has been suffering. US has been able to create 6 million jobs with 2 million manufacturing jobs alone created since his election.

this is nonsense. in what sectors?

[busymom0]

Why would you call a stat nonsense?

Here's sources. Note that they are from few months ago and the number has been growing since then:

> The Trump Scoreboard shows that 5.4 million new jobs have been created under the 45th president.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-scoreboard-shows-acc...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/02/01/manufact...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2019/03/11/trumps-p...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-december-nonfarm-payrolls-g...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-july-nonfarm-payrolls-grew-...

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/47900...

https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/trumps-economy...

[makomk]

The main countries that the US would want to coordinate this with are the EU ones, and that's pretty much a hopeless cause. EU rules mean that any action has to be taken by the EU as a whole and they just can't agree on this because the different countries' interests diverge too much.