The Chinese street’s view of the trade war: some say they won’t buy U.S. products

Above headlines tell a story of how local street vendors feel about US Tariffs on their goods and services. Common theme of those who gave opinions were the US can just go to hell. Vendors in BEIJING and SHANGHAI are very happy to smile at their US competitors because national and local chinese companies can not survive from selling within and new markets are being captured abroad but not in the US. #45 has made a dangerous gamble with US companies being the pawns. Those immediate casualties include Apple, General Motors and Disney. What’s so telling about this review is that the confidence comes from local vendors not the chinese government.

But the mood on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai is a little less accepting. Reuters talked to a cross section of 50 people, mainly from these two cities, about how concerned they are about the trade war, what they think Beijing’s response would be, and whether they think Chinese people should boycott American products in retaliation.

The interviews showed there is no palpable sense of crisis or panic yet. There is division and confusion over how China should respond to Trump, with some arguing that Beijing should strike back at American interests but others saying they didn’t know what could be done.

But perhaps most worrying for American businesses selling in China, a significant minority of the people interviewed – 14, or 28 percent – want to stop buying American products now, and some say they are already boycotting anything made in the U.S. Others said they would continue to buy American but that could change in the future.

But Trump moves on with his tariff warfare, the scariest view of this critical move is that Donald has a history of starting confrontation and just dropping the ball into other administration members hands without any further guidance. Our trade imbalance is horrible and desperately needs correction but is this the right path with Donald playing chicken. His track record for success is not very good. Almost non existent. .