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1/ If you target me with tariffs, that's bad for your consumers who have to pay more to buy my products, and it's bad for my producers who will probably sell you fewer things. For my government, the negative impact on your consumers is irrelevant unless it changes your behaviour.

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2/ If I retaliate with tariffs, that's bad for my consumers who will have to pay more for your goods and bad for your producers who will sell me fewer things. It is good for my producers who compete in my market with yours, but that is likely a different group than those hit with your tariffs.

3/ In other words, if you hurt both of us by hitting me with tariffs then my only retaliation option basically also consists of hurting us both - which only helps if it brings us to a truce or prevents you escalating further.

4/ This means that those confronted with a US willing to hurt itself with tariffs have no good options. I think you can make a credible case both for aggressive resistance and for appeasement. Anyone pretending the choice is easy is, in my view, kidding themselves.

Tariffs are problematic, but how about retaliating by allowing violations of copyrights/patents from the country that targeted you with tariffs? Hurts them, helps you! Or place restrictions on their social media companies? Arguably has a similar result!

They may be able to have it both ways with "appeasement" - Americans pay more for stuff they're going to buy anyway, and their own residents may buy less US stuff by choice. Will see if this actually happens anywhere other than Canada though.

5/ The case for aggressive resistance is that if you can cause the US real economic pain, their public may be less willing to endure it than yours - because you have the more compelling story to tell about being the aggreived party... ... and that such pain will make them back off.

Trump may make the choice easier if/when he reneges on his latest deals - as he did with his renegotiated NAFTA deal with Canada and Mexico. The only choice then will be aggressive resistance.

Yeah, though the issue there is slightly complicated by Chinese state capitalism. If my government is willing to spend a bunch of resources to make my goods cheaper than they should be in your market, and they start flooding in, should you intervene? Complex policy question too!

One thing this ignores is the policy lever to really promote domestic production, which serves both short-term and long-term goals. As an example, I think Switzerland does a lot to subsidize domestic agriculture, through financial policy and cultural pressure. It insulates them from some of this.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about? Yes, lots of countries have chosen industries they adopt a suite of policies to support - and sometimes that support includes tariffs. We're discussing specifically tariffs in a trade war context here... not long term policy.

Not disagreeing with anything you wrote. I guess I’m saying that really leaning in on bolstering domestic production is a kind of 3rd option that makes resistance a bit more palatable and relieves the “pain”. I’d like to see more countries aggressively go this route and tell Trump to kick rocks.

If the tariffs are regarded as permanent or at least long term, they will probably result in structural adjustments such that non-US countries trade more with each other and the US share of world trade declines.1/2