It all began with solar panels ($2.7 billion) and washing machines ($861.7 million).  The next shot in Donald Trump’s tariff war took aim at steel and aluminum.  Naturally, countries struck back hard.  China initially retaliated with $3 billion of tariffs on U.S. products. The European Union threatened the U.S. with tariffs on $7.1 billion worth of U.S. goods.  Canada retaliated with $12.8 billion of tariffs as did Mexico with over $3 billion worth on, among other things, steel, pork and cheese.

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Then Donald hit China with another $50 billion worth of tariffs.  Then China hit America with $50 billion in tariffs.  Then Donald threatened China with another $200 billion of additional tariffs, and $200 billion more on top of that.  Then China threatened an additional 25 percent tariff on another 106 U.S. products. Then, in May 2019, Donald Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese products, to which the Chinese responded by raising tariffs from 10 percent to 20-25 percent on nearly $60 billion worth of American goods.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 617 points.

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​In mid-August 2019 it really hit the fan.  Two years after the first shot, Donald Trump announced that he would impose an additional 10 percent tariff on $300 billion of Chinese imports.  In response, Beijing allowed its currency to weaken in order to offset some of the pain of the tariffs.

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Almost immediately, the U.S. Treasury Department formally labeled China a currency manipulator.  Great.  This meant that now this idiotic trade war could suddenly escalate into a currency war.  The very idea of this insanity sent the Dow plummeting a jaw-dropping 800 points in just one day.

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Unsurprisingly, on August 23rd Beijing announced that it would impose new tariffs on $75 billion in goods to which, in a tweet, Donald Trump responded that the U.S. would raise the rate of all tariffs on China by 5 percentage points.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 600 points.

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​At the time, Donald Trump’s tariffs affected over 50 percent of Chinese imports, but that wasn’t the worst of it.  Tariffs also affected 9.6 percent of imports from South Korea, 7.3 percent from Canada, 3.8 percent from Japan, and 2.5 percent from the European Union.  These are our allies!  This was just not cool.