Quote Originally Posted by jk View Post
how about saying that boeing airplanes aren't allowed to land in china? how about tripling the current tariffs on gm cars? how about upping "regulatory supervision" of all u.s. companies operating in china? how about not rolling over maturing treasuries that they hold [just like the fed]? [they stopped adding to their treasuries years ago] how about stopping the use within china of u.s. services?
China has other measures if it becomes enraged and wants a real fight. It's a fully formed dictatorship under central control, so the pain of the average Chinese citizen is pretty easy to overcome. If China wanted to they could decide to openly and explicitly steal US intellectual property and disregard all patents and copyrights. Start cloning iPhones and openly copying Microsoft Windows and sell them for pennies on the dollar. They could suddenly deny the U.S. rare earth elements, stainless steel, and all manner of critical materials now only available from China. They could nationalize factories built as joint ventures with U.S. companies, parading the U.S. staff through the streets in handcuffs for deportation.

I hope cooler heads prevail.