The Core

>80's ANYTHING from the US would be the most awesome thing

Definitely for me when growing up in the 80s in Scotland. Michael Jackson, WWF, hollywood... what wasn't to like.

Eye rolls when Western leaders talk about the free world, though. Protectionism seems to rear its head now and again, pretty sure there were similar tariffs in the early 2000s by Bush.

The US has been in "discssions" on trade for decades.

It was time to move those discussions along.

The stock market doesn't seem too concerned:
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/djia/charts

Regarding Levis:
http://allamericanreviews.com/levis/

For the large majority of their jeans, Levi’s are not made in the USA. More than 99% of their jeans are made in countries like China, Japan, Italy, and others. Levi’s does have a single collection of “Made in the USA” 501 jeans, sourced from a small denim mill called White Oak in Greensboro, NC.

If you want to get those Made in the USA Levi’s, it will definitely cost you. The price tag on the standard 501 jeans is typically seen at $178. However, their online shop right now shows no products available in this style.

Noboddy wins a trade war

The middle class certainly could. They've been screwed for at least 3 to 4 decades with the trade policies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3pf1qVrBz8
When visiting family in rural town in a southern state the local economy looked quite bombed out. There's a Wal-mart, but there are likely more choices/variation in payday loan providers in the town than in even fast food restaurants.

Many first world countries charge a VAT which ultimately ends up as a relative tax on imports, while the US does not charge one, which acts as a subsidy to foreign produced goods on a relative basis. And then the inefficient healthcare system chuck full of fraud is yet another tithing on domestic production.

There probably aren't two economies more intertwined than Canada and the USA.  I don't think the stock market is convinced this is going to happen yet.

The markets are absolutely ambivalent toward trade war risks though. If they were not then some of the corporate debt prices would look like a more extreme blow out of what happened in Italy recently.

A couple weeks ago when the media pitched that there will be no trade wars I thought that would have been a great time to buy a put option on some of the dollar store retailers. Stores like WalMart have resilient global supply chains where they can pick from numerous countries, but the smaller & fast-growth competitors would be hit far harder by a trade war.

>April

I am not seeing the relevancy; these decisions will impacting future quarters/years.

Thanks for the link to Richard Duncan's site.  I am going to watch some of his lectures.  China's economy is very interesting to me, I can't imagine it not having a major crisis in the near future with all the ghost towns of empty skyscrapers and other strange happenings over there.  There seems to be a strong push for wealthy Chinese to buy property outside China right now.  Locally most of the home buyers have been rich Chinese nationals looking for a place to drop some money -- the run up in prices is insane but fascinating to watch.

Thanks for the link to Richard Duncan's site.  I am going to watch some of his lectures.  China's economy is very interesting to me, I can't imagine it not having a major crisis in the near future with all the ghost towns of empty skyscrapers and other strange happenings over there.  There seems to be a strong push for wealthy Chinese to buy property outside China right now.  Locally most of the home buyers have been rich Chinese nationals looking for a place to drop some money -- the run up in prices is insane but fascinating to watch.

I should clarify that most of Richard Duncan's videos are about macroeconomics & the US impact in the global economy rather than being strictly about the Chinese economy, though he certainly has a few about China.

There is not a lot of trust in the domestic Chinese economy. Which is part of why there are some odd sounding regulations outside the mainland.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2115384/lawmakers-district-councillors-rally-against-review-hong
http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201607/26/P2016072600640.htm

the price in Shenzen for real estate was listed at $8,665/square meter
https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/China/Price-History
in desirable areas the price can even double from there
https://www.smh.com.au/world/beijing-shanghai-shenzhen-the-cities-where-house-prices-rose-by-30-to-40-per-cent-20161003-grtwe6.html

Prices in central Beijing conservatively start at 80,000 yuan [about $16,000] per square metre, making even a nondescript, 100-square-metre, two-bedroom, previously owned apartment $1.6 million.

the high prices even flow into micro-units

In Shenzhen, a manufacturing and tech hub in southern China, social media users were in uproar over the sale of outrageously expensive "micro-apartments". The six-square-metre "pigeon cage" apartments were snapped up swiftly, despite the price tag of 880,000 yuan being roughly 20 times the city's average annual per capita income.

6 square meters is 64.5835 square feet
880,000 yuan is $137,680.40
that is $2,131.82 per square foot, or nearly double the cost of San Francisco per square foot
https://sf.curbed.com/2017/9/29/16385146/san-francisco-price-per-square-foot

the doors off the hinges bubble craze in China
https://twitter.com/CGTNOfficial/status/780225811584389120
makes most of the rest of the world look cheap by comparison

The simple rules of thumb—sell China, sell Korea, sell emerging markets, prefer smaller to larger U.S. stocks and buy the safe-haven dollar and bonds—have been working better than detailed analysis so far, in part because the prospects for a trade war are still so uncertain. If it becomes clear that new trade barriers are here to stay, understanding both the details of which companies will be hit and the knock-on effects on the economy will matter more.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-trade-a-trade-war-1529595543?mod=e2fb