>>... Long before President Donald Trump fired the opening shots of a new U.S.-China trade war from the White House Rose Garden last week, Beijing had been working to perfect its stealth campaign blocking key U.S. agriculture and energy exports. The Chinese government over the past four months has halted or significantly curtailed direct exports of major U.S. commodities including beef, poultry and liquified natural gas through an array of bureaucratic blocks and tricky third-party sales deals.

... The Chinese government knows where it can pinch U.S. exporters hardest. It has already declined to renew export licenses for hundreds of meatpacking plants, alleged that some U.S. chicken products contain unwanted drugs and stopped importing U.S. natural gas. Those industry targets also happen to be some of the president's most ardent political supporters.

Such tactics underscore the dexterity of Beijing's response to rising U.S.-China trade tensions - and its years of preparation for a new trade war. What began as an additional 50 percent tariff that raised levies on Chinese imports to north of 104 percent Wednesday turned into a 145 percent tariff level a little over 12 hours later. That second increase came after Beijing upped its own tariffs on U.S. goods to a total levy of 84 percent. Beijing's counter-tariff reprisal pushed levies on U.S. imports to 125 percent Friday... <<
http://www.politico.com/news/2...-war-exports-00287123


-------------------------

"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

Trump's Shart of the Deal...

-------------------------
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC - KV

Trump is so far out of his lane it's laughable. It like the Lakers playing a rec pickup league team.

-------------------------
I was right.