Reddit mentions of War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft

> Trump insists that tariffs force China to pay money to the US Treasury — which just isn’t true. When a tariff is placed on a Chinese good, it is the company importing that product or a consumer buying it who pays a higher price — not China. In other words, these tariffs are effectively a tax on Americans.

This is actually complicated. If China's market were entirely free, then the tax would fall in part on Chinese businesses and in part on American consumers, in proportion with the relative elasticities, as taxes do. However, China's market is not entirely free. There are lots of (large) state-owned enterprises, and it's commonly believed that some of them are using state assets to manipulate their market positions. In one sense, this seems like a simple positive for Americans - we benefit from lower prices, some of which is coming out of the Chinese state's coffers. In another sense, the market positions of those SOEs can have geopolitical impacts. This complicates the analysis greatly. Now, the tax falls economically on all three of the American people, Chinese businesses, and the Chinese state (in proportions that are likewise complicated), as well as having even fuzzier geopolitical impacts.

I'm starting to be of the belief that this game is super complicated, and I trust almost nothing that any popular outlet has to say on the topic (especially if it seems like they're using one portion or another to try to score domestic partisan political points). The variety of expertise you need in a room to make sense of it is pretty staggering, and I feel immensely inadequate to analyze it, myself (it's not within my area of expertise; I'm just a somewhat-educated amateur on these topics). About the only thing I can do is hope that the decisions aren't being made entirely by Trump flying by the seat of his pants, and that it involves significant analysis by a combination of Treasury/Fed, State, and Defense. While specific choices may not be directly the strategy that would have been pursued by a hypothetical alternative administration, the general concerns and complications involved are pretty directly related to the things Hillary was bringing to the forefront with her Economic Statecraft push.

Somewhat related, but a good read on some of China's economic tactics (War by Other Means) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674979796/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_LsPNDbAT90RQN

Welp. I know what I'm reading next.

(Basically Geoconomics 101 by Bush alum Robert Blackwill)