So, recent news brings an interesting question to mind, would a total cessation of US-China trade be worse for the US than a single thermonuclear missile strike on the US mainland?
Well, we’d have “less money”, but hiring would go through the roof, national sovereignty would increase, and less than one million people would die (probably - difficult to calculate secondary economic effects of what would be an across-the-board price increase), so…
I’m pretty sure that both the US and China are reliant on the other for things that they can’t actually replace autarchically even at much higher prices (e.g. certain rare earth metals for the US, a lot of IP for China). The adjustment would be pretty steep.
We had rare earth mining in America, it just shut down because China was cheaper.
