The Trump administration’s list of goods to be subjected to the tariffs is aimed at these high-tech sectors, including aerospace, telecommunications equipment and robotics.

China has said it will place tariffs on $50 billion worth of American imports in retaliation. That’s where things get interesting. The Trump administration is threatening to escalate things further if China retaliates, pulling another $100 billion of goods into the mix. This increases the possibility that the dispute will spiral to encompass ever larger swaths of goods.

Will it work?

China views development of its high-tech industries as core to its economic strategy of the future and won’t want to give up advantages in those sectors lightly. On the other hand, the substantial U.S. trade deficit with China means the American side has more potential Chinese imports on which to slap punitive tariffs than the Chinese do, a potential source of leverage.

The Trump administration’s negotiating strategy has been erratic. At one point last month, there seemed to be progress toward an accord in which China would buy more American agriculture and energy products. That would have helped reduce the United States’ trade deficit with China, one of the president’s major goals. But it wouldn’t have done much of anything about the longer-term issues around technology theft, and those talks fell apart.

The United States might have a stronger negotiating position if it were joined by allies like Canada, Japan and the European Union. But given the steel and aluminum tariffs and tensions with Canada, the United States finds itself on its own in talks with China.

Is this going to crash the U.S. economy?

Probably not.

The United States has gross domestic product of nearly $20 trillion, so a new tax on $50 billion (or, eventually, $150 billion or more) of Chinese imports is a rounding error. Even when you count the costs of steel and aluminum and other tariffs that have resulted from the president’s aggressive trade, it’s hard to get to numbers that move the dial much on overall growth.

As countries retaliate, they can certainly cause damage for individual American industries that export, but the reality is most of the economic activity in the United States is for domestic consumption. Exports constitute about 12 percent of G.D.P.