[CowboyJay]

"It unfortunately intensified and elongated the Great Depression."

Debatable. More likely Keynesian intervention preventing asset revaluation, and starving the private sector of capital. But even if so, during that time the US was a net exporter. No parallels with today's economy.

We absolutely need deregulation and tax reform. No argument there. But China can still incentivize to the point that their finished goods can be sold below US cost of production. So I think it's a bit naive to posit that US deindustrialization will not proceed barring some form of protectionism. Tariffs are clearly constitutional, and most of the jobs and businesses being moved overseas are NOT unionized.

Currency valuation is a red herring as it pertains balance-of-trade. If the Chinese revalue the RMB, their production costs go DOWN. It will also give them more purchasing power for them in resource markets, which means more PPI inflation from our perspective. In other words, it will drive US production costs UP at the same time. It's a wash, and a distraction from the real issues which are predatory Chinese trade practices, the US regulatory/tax environment, and what is increasingly an anti-US trade policy being put into practice by our own government.

[LA Conservative]

So let’s focus on the original issue you bring up, which I interpret as raising tariffs on Chinese imports. What is generally the result of raising tariffs?

Usually, the country who has to pay the tariffs will also raise tariffs, resulting in diminished American exports and higher consumer prices. Furthermore, China owns so much American debt, that if they were to rapidly dump dollars for gold, real estate, or other assets, what would happen to the value of the dollar? There are no other countries large enough to absorb the huge increase in monetary supply and the US Treasury has already brought us past the brink by their Ponzi scheme of buying their own debt.

China is also rapidly growing their military and have laid down the gauntlet by telling us to lay off of Pakistan, one of two major sources of Islamist instability, the other being Iran.

They are going to hang us with our own rope.

It seems like a checkmate on that front. The only thing that I can think of is too engage in a significant austerity program and cut the debt by at least a trillion dollars a year to demonstrate the US Gov’t is taking the debt seriously and will not signal default or devaluation of the dollar as a means of dealing with the debt.

It is a highly complex problem, and one not likely to be solved politically, due to the inefficiencies and corruption of government.