What if:

China ignores US sanctions on Iranian Oil and in fact increases its purchases of Iranian oil?China decides to sell off it's over one trillion dollars in US Treasury Bonds and stop buying new US Treasury Bonds?China devalues the Yuan?China opens Free Trade negotiations with Europe, Canada, Mexico?China joins the Trans Pacific Partnership that Trump pulled the US out of?

I think you missed the rebuttal.Pretty sure it goes something like this:"Trade wars are easy to win!"
and
"Tariffs are great!"The amount of not-caring, either by ignorance or stupidity, is obvious.
Personally, I go with stupidity - as I lump "being arrogant and self-absorbed" into being stupid.

I forgot one that is a variation of "China decides to sell off it's over one trillion dollars in US Treasury Bonds and stop buying new US Treasury Bonds?".What If China swaps the over one trillion dollars in US Treasury Bonds for Iranian Oil? Currently Iranian oil is about $70.00 a barrel IIRC and China has been buying 620,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day.What if Iran held over a trillion dollars of US Treasury Bonds?Edited by jar, : on should have an "e"

The US started a trade war - with all sorts of tariffs.
And all affected countries responded in kind - pretty much dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs.The US increased tariffs on some countries even more.
And those countries retaliated with similar tariffs back on the US.I think the US may have believed that most retaliatory efforts would take the form of tariffs back on them and that they could deal with such things for a while, anyway.But I've heard China has taken things in another direction as well - simply cancelling previously committed orders. China Cancels Soybean PurchasesI've heard numbers as high as $12 billion worth of soybean orders from US to China have simply been cancelled.
Leaving the US with a bunch of soybeans no one else is willing to buy and no money to show for them.
And China is simply ordering their soybeans from other countries.How does this sort of tactic work into your What if questions?
Are there other sorts of large-industries where China could simply cancel their expected actions?

The EU is buying a load of soybeans in exchange for Trump dropping the tariffs on steel and aluminium - CORRECTION, apparently those remain in place but the threat of further tariffs has been dropped.. Now we know why Trump went for that deal.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Yeah, it appears that the tariffs that are already in place will continue, but the planned additional tariffs not yet in place will be placed on hold. So more of a ceasefire than a "deal". The New York Times adds a bit of skepticism about a "victory": Which sounds about right. Trump continually talks about the trade deficit, but currently tariffs don't really have much to do with that.

There are many such options and all the options point towards the same results; Trade Wars are NOT easy to win.Back in 1946 Irving Berlin wrote a great little song for the Broadway Play "Annie Get your Gun" called Anything you can do I can do better...Well China is a nation of pretty bright educated thinkers. It is a large nation with a large educated population to draw talent from. It has a command type capitalist economy with a strong technological base. It can build planes and boats and computers and phones and cars and trains and produce steel and aluminum.According to WWW.Mining.Com
"China is the leader in mining gold, zinc, lead, molybdenum, iron ore, coal, tin, tungsten, rare earths, graphite, vanadium, antimony and phosphate, and holds second place in mine production of copper, silver, cobalt, bauxite/alumina and manganese."China exports raw materials mainly because there is not a large domestic demand; but if the State decided to ramp up manufacture of finished products they could become direct competitors of Boeing and GM and Ford and Fiat/Chrysler and ...... and by joining in the free trade agreements that the US abandons quickly become a dominate player in the marketplace.

These scenarios, while thought of as far-fetched, underscore the tenacious position of Trump foreign policy.Look at this article: Are Oil Markets Underestimating Irans Threats?

quote:

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Bob McNally, founder and president of energy consultancy The Rapidan Group, said that the U.S. is waging economic war against Iran and when a country is backed into a corner like that, there has to be some risk that the country will lash out, even if it’s against a bigger power.(...) When you talk about Iran's exports, that's about 2.5 million barrels per day, but if you talk about interrupting the Strait of Hormuz, that's 19 million barrels a day, he said. About 30 percent of...seaborne-traded oil goes through that strait. So that's a much bigger problem.

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Of course, if China then added gasoline to the trade war fire by swapping treasury notes for oil, as an example...it would clearly be an act of war. So What If? If China and Iran collaborated with an act of war scenario, what exactly could the United Staes do to retaliate??

No, certainly not an act of war. A provocation, maybe.

While in reality or a reality based society that could never be considered an act of war in the alternate society Trump is trying to create, a society based on desire and fantasy it could certainly be used as an excuse for war.Real wars are even harder to win than Trade Wars.Edited by jar, : appling spallin

So one question is whether Trump really understands the game..
He may well be advocating the bitter medicine of wrestling the US away from globalization even if it means short-term(20 years+) pain so that Baron can inherit the legacy in 30 years...meanwhile the US middle class gets crushed and Trumps blue-collar supporters endure hard times and struggle to inherit the vacuum left by the imploding middle class. A win for the rich and for the blue collar conservatives...a loss for the Democratic "elitists" in the middle.

It's not a game.All great empires eventually learn that fact.Wresting the US away from globalization simply means the rest of the world will get along just fine; the already rich will get alone just fine.

If that is the case, then Trump got a good deal. Well, other than the fact that the tariffs still hurt us.

It sounds like it, but the EU tariffs on US imports also stay in place, and he has dropped the threat to escalate. And I’m not so sure that shuffling the soybeans around a bit differently is going to cost the EU much. I doubt that the Chinese demand for soybeans will drop significantly, they’ll just get them from elsewhere.

Correct. What Trump gets out of it is a market for some of the soybeans that China won't buy from the US. That should relieve some of the political pressure on some of his Republican Congressmen a bit.