With its own tariffs on American goods, China would join other countries that have retaliated against Mr. Trump’s trade measures, bringing the total value of affected American exports to about $75 billion by the end of the week. That is still a small fraction of the $1.55 trillion of goods the United States exported last year, but in some industries, the pain is becoming intense.

[Read more about the potential impact of a trade war on the global economy, and James B. Stewart's take on how President Trump’s talk about free trade conflicts with his action.]

The tariffs on China, the world’s largest manufacturing hub, affect a much larger share of products and a greater percentage of companies that rely on global supply chains, potentially hurting American companies even more than the Chinese firms the Trump administration is targeting. Research by Mary Lovely and Yang Liang of Syracuse University shows that in the field of computer and electronics products, for example, non-Chinese multinational corporations operating in China supply 87 percent of the products that will be affected by tariffs, while Chinese firms send only 13 percent.

A 2011 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco showed that, for every dollar spent on an item labeled “Made in China,” 55 cents went for services produced in the United States. The risks that a trade war posed to the economy was a substantial topic of discussion when Fed policymakers met three weeks ago, according to minutes of the meeting released Thursday.