CHINA/TARIFFS/TRADE WAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s multi-front trade war on the global stage has opened two distinct political battles over tariffs in the domestic arena that will shape the future of U.S. trade policy: in his race for reelection, and in the coming reckoning in Congress on his legislative priority, a renegotiated NAFTA. The new politics of trade is scrambling traditional party alignments in a fashion unseen in modern American history. A new episode of POLITICO’s Global Translations podcast detailed how far Trumpism has pried Republicans away from their free-trade orthodoxy — a gambit that comes to a head next month. Meanwhile, the 2020 presidential primary is pushing Democrats toward a far more confrontational position with China compared with the stances of the Obama and Clinton administrations…Within the 2020 presidential race, Trump’s campaign believes he can beat the Democratic field by standing up as the fiercest defender of American interests against the economic and strategic threats from China.”
–Luiza Ch. Savage, “‘There’s China and there’s everything else:’ Trump’s trade wars scramble domestic political fights,” Politico, June 13, 2019 5:05 am