President Trump wants to teach China a lesson. Unfortunately, the lesson that China learns may be the exact opposite of the one Trump thinks he's teaching.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration released a list of proposed tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese products. This would be in addition to tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods partially rolled out last week. Trump has said that another round, targeting $300 billion in goods, is in the works.
Do the math: If all those tariffs came to pass, we would have new taxes on $550 billion worth of Chinese products -- that is, more than the sum total of Chinese goods imported last year by the United States.