And the answer is that, against all evidence, he really does believe, as he's put it, that trade wars are good and easy to win - and that this is how you do it. In particular, Trump seems to think that the USA's brewing confrontation with China, a country that really is doing abusive things like forcing foreign companies to transfer over technology, will be such a piece of cake that he doesn't need to enlist US allies in the fight, but can rather launch a simultaneous economic attack on them to try to make them end the very few tariffs they do have on things like American . . . dairy products? Actually, yes. This is a strategy, if you want to call it that, born of three misconceptions. The first is that countries that buy more than they sell overseas have little to lose from a trade war. The idea is that it's easier for American consumers to switch over to buying non-Chinese goods than it is for Chinese companies to switch over to selling to non-American customers, therefore the Chinese will capitulate first. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Now, there's actually a kernel of truth to this, but only a kernel. An all-out trade war which, after Trump proposed putting tariffs on almost everything China exports to us, is what we're talking about here -- might hurt the USA a little less than it would hurt China. But it would still hurt the USA a lot. It's not just that China could make life impossible for American companies trying to do business over there; or even that, despite the US trade deficit, it still sells a lot of things to the Chinese that it no longer would sell to them after they put up even more retaliatory tariffs. Loading

It's also that the US would be harmed by its very own tariffs in cases where its businesses are building things with parts they bought from China (economists Chad Brown, Eujin Jung and Zhiyao Lu estimate these kind of tariffs make up estimate make up half of the ones Trump has announced so far). In other cases the USA would end up having to pay higher prices for Chinese goods because there wouldn't be any ready-made American substitutes. The real question, then, is whether a dictatorial government that can violently crush all dissent would give in before the democratic government would just because the former was facing a little more economic pain. The answer to this isn't obvious, no matter what Trump might think. Trump seems intent on alienatng his allies. Credit:AP And that's why it would be nice to have Europe, Japan and Canada on America's side in all of this. Without them also putting pressure on China with tariffs of their own, it's not clear that the USA would be able to win the trench warfare that a tit-for-tat tariff fight could turn into. But America won't have that backup because of Trump's second mistake: He thinks that anything less than completely free trade is worth fighting over. Which, to use a technical term, is nuts. Loading