I am among the few who think it might eventually prove itself a good idea. To start with, Europe has no good cards to play. Ultimately, Europe will side with t

I am among the few who think it might eventually prove itself a good idea. To start with, Europe has no good cards to play. Ultimately, Europe will side with the United States while it builds self-sufficiency on several fronts, especially defense. Europe also recognizes that the complete relocation of production capacity into China wasn't good in the long run; it's just that they had no ability to act on their own. The US has repeatedly suggested publicly that it's not entirely about tariffs, and more might have been said privately. The tariffs the EU and Britain will drop are probably not what the US is after; what the US wants is to reduce global demand for Chinese manufacturing. Europe will find it easier to sell this—bringing manufacturing back and protectionism even at the cost of say, welfare and environment—to the public due to the violent shakedown over the past two weeks, as well as what happened with Ukraine and Russia. Ongoing European emergency measures to increase defense spending will be followed by incentives to rebuild strategic industry—like how China supported civilian–military partnership with policy. Meanwhile the Indian government is already looking for ways to replace Chinese imports with US imports, where it can [1]. Japan and North Korea will follow suit; Trump is already saying that Korea needs to pay for US troops. The US is (in my view) on solid footing here. At the very least, they get better trade deals from everyone else—Europe, India, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc. A number of companies will move production back into the US, and the government can prioritize those with more military value (chip-making, batteries, cars, shipbuilding [2] , etc.). And if the US can convince others to start decoupling from China, this will weaken Chinese manufacturing capacity. Given the pain it's going to inflict in the short term, Trump is the only person who could have started this trade war. There might have been ways to do this without such a shake-up, but I am not convinced that this was a stupid move. This was an anti-China move right from the beginning, disguised as an outrage against everyone's tariffs. [1]: https://www.financialexpress.com/business/industry/replace-chinese-goods-with-us-imports-govt-tells-industry-amidst-trumps-tariff-threat/3777822/ https://www.financialexpress.com/business/industry/replace-c... [2]: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3306177/us-fires-fresh-broadside-chinas-shipyards-new-executive-order https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3306177/u... To clarify: none of this is China's fault. They did a fantastic job for their country, pulling hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.