The US GDP derives less than 10% from trade, China is the reverse. Further, the US is only reliant on a few rare and special ores found mostly in China a vast country devoid of natural resources save coal. The specialist metals are specific to NASA.

The US could stop 99% of imports from China, China would suffer an epic collapse. The impact on US citizens? well that depends on the consumer products, much is crap, but they can ship it fast because it is crap, then there is cloned, but improving crap, stolen designs, and patents via industrial espionage. China quality and reliability, is improving ergo 5–10 years time, they like Japan etc became innovators, with high-end products.

The US could source alternatives from Japan, India, South Korea, and other developing nations.

So it really boils down to, how much cheap crap can US people do without?,since many millennials do not have the brains they were borne with i.e think milk is not from cows but manufactured and have no real idea of what really going without is, could be a problem.

China might supply steel to Japan for cars, but in the end, it is a Japanese export, and the US might need to restrict indirect China export, by content to say 10%. This aspect is in part academic, China has no own resource, it must buy it in, which is why they are trying to dump the large purchase of global ore supply, when demand declined, leaving them with an ever-increasing disastrous loss, and no buyers for their cheap steel, because for example, the E.U. Steel industry is on it knees, buying from China, with no global uptick, would finish it off.

Is now the right time?. Yes, but the final scenario must be that Trumps Infrastructure plan in his manifesto, that will make more efficient road, rail, sea, air, and ports, supplemented by tax breaks on Capital Equipment aka new, more efficient production and removal of Obama red tape, laws and production destroying rules, have to work.

It has the hallmarks of the German powerhouse, if that fails, then porous borders allowing in cheap labor, bringing down wage costs is the only alternative, but legal US citizens and their children’s future job prospects will be bleak civil unrest. This is why Trump must succeed.

And that is before robots, automation, and A.I.,…still think you do not need a wall and strict immigration laws?

FOOTNOTE:

I received suggested changes to the above from Stephen Su. I have disabled comments on circa 70% of my posts because of profanities and at best unhinged & specious statements from them. To be 100% fair to Stephen he was courteous and does make some very valid statements.

However, I decided against publishing his recommendations, because they strive to protect China’s exports to all nations, but fail to accept that, in order to protect the livelihoods of current US workers and the future jobs of their children they have a right to protect the US too.

Notwithstanding I will correct certain parts of his statements, because they are simply wrong:

1. The W.T.O. cannot prevent to US from applying any form of the several known tariffs. At worst the US could withdraw to normal World Trade contracts, that is the same as the UK would face if no BREXIT deal is agreed with the E.U. Even then, because the US is a far bigger consumer nation, it would circumvent ‘basic’ contracts, thus guaranteeing, should it wish better deals than those unfair ones with China, the EU, Canada & Mexico, it can do this despite the unfair current contracts, as was seen by the new contract with Mexico.
2. I was purposely conservative in my comments about ‘resources’. Stephen seems to think that the US and the world, need China’s recently trained 50,000,000 skilled mode level engineers and goes on to state that is twice the population of Australia. It completely overlooks that labor force not only will ensure fewer jobs for Americans, or any nation for that matter, thus eventually in short time wiping out the US worker jobs. Indeed borrowing his own words ‘twice the population of Australia’, implies it would wipe out all employment in Australia.
3. I also was conservative regards the non-human resources of China, but again that was not to upset any Chinese, it was to avoid any further exemplification, that simply supports and furthers my point(s), not to mention Stephen ignores there are alternative country suppliers. I did actually infer that China had rare earth metal, vital to US trade. Magnets also come from rare earth metals, the very powerful ones, that are sadly brittle, but I move off point. Stephen has provided some detail, however, it is wrong in a number of areas. China is not the number 1 or 2 supplier of Lithium, Chile & Australia are. The correction also ignores that these items are split into categories of Metallurgy [magnasite] where China is world producer (70% of world tonnage). Ignoring Fuels, next are Minerals, where to add further clarity, ‘Coal’ where China is the biggest producer, is not classed as a mineral. In fairness to Stephen, he never said it was, but I cannot check if he has included coal, in error in his numbers. I did not go into detail because I endeavored to omit the Environmental impacts, which do not point China in a good light at all

And let’s avoid further confusion. I was 100% right regards Iron Ore, used to make Steel. To further underscore my post, the USA is self-sufficient in iron ore, it remains the worlds 8th biggest producer.

It could grow to 3rd or 4h, but the reserves of magnetite are shrinking, and have only 15% reserves in contrast to China. In the US the cost of making Steel was the issue and is why no business acumen Obama stated last year that Trump could not re-invigorate USSteel. Obama as usual talks well, and performs poorly, Trump using shale gas energy, then USSteel using new efficient smelters, combined with also the import of more pig iron, from the US’s biggest iron ore supplier, thus reducing also the cost per tonne, made USSteel a success.

China is, however, the worlds biggest consumer of iron ore, but only 3rd largest supplier of magnetite, Australia is the largest. Reserves wise China is 4th in the world, behind Australia, Russia & Brasil; Australia is first and holds 50m metric tons which are two and a half times that of China.

And finally, the reason I omitted the Environmental impact is that wrongly on here I am regarded as a nonbeliever in Climate Change, and again usually Liberals attack everything I said, so I no longer comment. However I will this time confirm I do believe in climate change, but not its exaggeration, not the bull shit Paris Accord, that Trump left, because he was right; and it was proven both China & India, increased their output of emissions in 2017.

As to the fraud behind the Global Stats, using Wikipedia as a base is never accurate, unless one delves deeper. For example, CO 2 output in metric tonnes for China is 8.49 which puts it way down the list of offenders. However guess who is top offender with 54.41 metric tonnes?, Kuwait!!. The attention curve of too many iPhone etc users today is minimal, ergo it circumvents using ones grey matter if one did they would see the Wikipedia data is based on ‘per capita’, of the population, ergo extrapolation will confirm that both Russia & India are the worlds Polluters and exponentially increasing.

In conclusion, the clarity I have added is not to prove Stephen wrong, because I admire his defense of China, Stephens only error, he cannot accept the US can shop elsewhere and if that is without taking imports from China, China will slip back very quickly into the dark ages. I hope more to wake up the indolent, I want free stuff, me, me, me non-empathy to country individuals, to be patriots and for once and “think what you can do for your country, not what your country can do for you”, and yes a Liberal wrote that, so perhaps current Liberals & all party politic & non voters will return to that and for once take on a work ethic, similar to China.