President Donald Trump is responding to a trade war — not starting one — he inherited by pursuing a “level playing field” via tariffs, wrote former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday.

Palin pointed to comments made by Breitbart News’s Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour last Thursday about Trump’s proposals to combat “economic warfare” waged by China to destroy America’s steel and aluminum manufacturers.

China’s predatory pricing of steel and aluminum exports is designed to destroy the financial viability of America’s domestic manufacturers of the metals, said Mansour:

What China is doing, they are willing to take a loss on steel and dump steel below the price of what it costs them to make it simply because they want to destroy our industry for a strategic reason. They want the world to be dependent on them. They want to take the market; that’s why they’re dumping steel. This is an act of war. This is economic warfare.

“POTUS isn’t starting any trade war… it’s been raging for decades and we keep losing,” wrote Palin. “People MUST understand our nation’s solvency and sovereignty are at stake here.”

POTUS isn’t starting any trade war… it’s been raging for decades and we keep losing. People MUST understand our… https://t.co/xV6CyRDrv4 — Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) March 5, 2018

The “Trump Doctrine” illustrates the president’s wisdom via his “private sector experience,” wrote Palin:

President Trump inherited this trade war, and he’s an atypical politician determined to actually do something to fix the problem. The Trump Doctrine involves finally enforcing rules and standards to level the playing field — which proves the wisdom of private sector perspective brought to the White House. President Trump is consistent on tariffs. He’s preached about fair competition via tariffs for decades, so why all this feigned shock at his recent proposal? No matter though, because middle class Americans concerned about our industrial demise “get it.” And we see the heads exploding over this issue sit atop career bureaucrats, globalists and typical politicians who’ve done nothing to fix trade imbalances… which pretty much says it all.

Mansour has praised President Donald Trump’s intention to go “full economic nationalist” by levying tariffs on China to “protect American industry” from China’s dumping of steel and aluminum.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.