If you think it is pensions, investments and jobs that matter most in all this, think again.
Ultimately, this is about who gets to run the world.
The bad news for America and the rest of the West is that this time, China seems far more prepared and up for the fight.
On the one side, a chaotic US administration veering sharply from one policy to another. On the other, an authoritarian government digging in its heels.
In Trump’s first term, China seemed uncertain how to respond to America’s maverick new president and his use of tariffs.
Its diplomats’ rhetoric this time is far more blunt and defiant; “We are ready for you,” they seem to be saying, “and are up for the fight”.
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America and China have been locked in a history of both dependence and confrontation.
Back in the ’90s, China was allowed to trade on favourable terms.
“If they became rich like us”, the West believed, “they’d become more democratic too”.
It was a naive belief. China remained authoritarian and was ruthless too, using piracy, reverse engineering and all-out theft of technology to catch up with the West.
But the West didn’t seem to care. Everyone was getting richer. China was making the world’s stuff and lifting millions of its people out of poverty, while America was buying it cheaply and keeping down its own cost of living.
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Fast-forward a few decades, and the two giants are still closely entwined as trading partners, but the rancour between them has grown.
First under Trump and then under Biden, the US began seeing the error of being too generous to China. Under both presidents, America has been trying to correct what it sees as a trading relationship stacked in Beijing’s favour.
Chinese objections are different. Most of all, they resent America’s status as world hegemon, or strongest power. The liberal world order was built by and for America, they believe, and has reached its sell-by date.
It sees this crisis as a chance to change all that. And it has been getting ready.
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China presents itself as a stable, predictable alternative world power to America. The first three months of Donald Trump’s second presidency are only helping.
This is the pitch to other countries: Want a new partner who offers economic stability, equal standing and no awkward lectures on human rights? Ditch America and call Beijing.
There are huge downsides, of course, if America is supplanted by China and the world is refashioned in its image.
Ask the people of Hong Kong, whose freedoms have been brutally trampled, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, victims of what is by most accounts a genocide, or the Taiwanese, currently at the sharp end of massive bullying by Beijing.
But America has been busy destroying its sales pitch too, no longer a paragon of stability, good government or rational policy making.
In any prolonged trade war, Donald Trump is taking on a foe that is prepared and determined.
It has moved much of its industry to other countries to avoid tariffs, built up a massive trade war chest in the shape of its sovereign wealth fund used this week to prop up tumbling stock markets.
Read more analysis:
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China has weaknesses, of course. Huge demographic problems, a sclerotic economy, and festering public resentment.
But it has one great strength over all, an appetite to endure pain.
The Chinese call it “eating bitterness”. It’s considered a virtue. They believe their destiny is at the top of a new multipolar world order, and this could be the moment to seize it.
It is not clear whether America has quite the same determination and reserves of strength – or if its president knows what he is taking on.
