“You’re going to see tit-for-tat actions, but our view of this is that you’re going to get two countries who understand that it is fundamentally more in their interest to cooperate than compete,” Mr. Haines said. “They’re going to figure out ways to cooperate even in the midst of things that sound like they’re escalating.”

Scholars who have studied trade disputes have found that trade skirmishes can end with more mutually satisfactory arrangements. One key is for countries to retaliate carefully against what they consider to be unfair practices, targeting politically sensitive industries in the country with which they are clashing. It is a safe bet that negotiators in the United States, China and elsewhere are well aware of this.

The implication of this view is not that an all-out trade war is impossible, just that some of the loose talk about the idea in the last week — including by the president — is getting far ahead of the facts.

Joe Brusuelas, the chief economist at the accounting firm RSM, sketched out what a true trade war would look like.

“The first indicator that a trade war has begun would be the announced intention to withdraw from, or abrogate, current trade treaty arrangements,” Mr. Brusuelas wrote recently.

He contrasts that with “trade spats,” which take place continually, and tariff actions that are rarer but have been used many times without setting off a major economic dislocation. A recent example was the Obama administration’s 2009 tariff on Chinese tires, which did coincide with a rebound in domestic tire production (though it was costly relative to the number of jobs created).

If the United States ignored rulings of the World Trade Organization, or pulled out of Nafta, it could trigger a series of steps including not just tariffs but other restrictions on international commerce, and perhaps limits on the flow of capital across borders and even the expropriation of foreign-owned assets. He does not see that dark scenario as imminent.