Vox Sentences: It’s beginning to look a lot like a trade war

• What began as a (trade) war of words between China and the United States is escalating into very real action between the two nations. [Washington Post / Heather Long]
• Today, China announced $50 billion worth of proposed retaliatory tariffs on US goods, including soybeans, automobiles, whiskey, and chemicals (this is in addition to the $3 billion worth of tariffs it announced earlier this week). [NYT / Keith Bradsher and Steven Lee Myers]
• This eye-popping price tag on China’s tariffs came in response to the Trump administration’s newly proposed $50 billion tariffs on Chinese goods such as aerospace, robotics, and certain kinds of machinery. [NPR / Bill Chappell]
• World markets are noticeably uneasy in response to the escalating tariff battle. This morning saw stocks slump; they then rebound as some economists reminded that even with the big numbers, this is still a relatively small portion of the countries’ overall economies. [WSJ / Amrith Ramkumar and David Hodari]
• Predictably, the president took to Twitter this morning to complain that he was not actually the one starting a trade war — it was “incompetent” US leaders who came before him. Trump also wrote that with a $500 billion trade deficit already in place, the US can’t lose any more. [Donald Trump via Twitter]
• But Trump definitely has something to lose out of all this. China is specifically targeting industries that Trump campaigned on revitalizing in 2016. Chinese officials have said they won’t pull the trigger on their tariffs unless the US acts first. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
• If a US-China trade war were to happen, it wouldn’t be catastrophic for the US economy, but it would really hurt farmers and auto manufacturers in the Midwest (a.k.a. parts of Trump country). [Washington Post / Heather Long]
• It’s worth reiterating that the tariff issue is one on which Trump breaks sharply with members of his own party. Congressional Republicans are very uneasy about this (and so far have shown they don’t have the ability to rein in the president on the issue). Some have even suggested taking action to stop Trump. [NBC News / Leigh Ann Caldwell]
• It could also have implications for Republicans in the 2018 midterms, giving Democrats an opportunity to point out how tariffs could hurt local farmers and Republicans having no easy defense — as they themselves are asking Trump to step away from the edge. [Washington Post / Mike DeBonis]