Next cold war coming? Depends on how China chooses to respond to US tariffs

Could the US and China really be on the verge of the kind of geopolitical stalemate that dominated the second half of the 20th century?

President Donald Trump is making good on his pledge to escalate the trade war with China by imposing tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese goods. The Chinese government, for its part, is already retaliating with new taxes on $60 billion of American imports.

If you’re curious why China’s sanctions don’t match Trump’s, there’s an easy explanation. As a number of commentators have correctly pointed out, Beijing is running out of American products to target. Americans bought $375 billion more stuff from China than the Chinese bought from the US last year, which means Trump has a lot more to punish.