Eight years ago, when a newly elected Donald J. Trump promised to apply the powers of the Oval Office to start a trade war with China, the target of his ire was widely viewed as a juggernaut. China was the indispensable factory floor to the world and a swiftly developing market for goods and services.
As Mr. Trump now prepares for his second stint in the White House, he is vowing to intensify trade hostilities with China by imposing additional tariffs of 60 percent or more on all Chinese imports. He is pressuring a country that has been chastened by a powerful combination of overlapping forces: the calamitous end of a real estateinvestment binge, incalculable losses in the banking system, a local government debt crisis, flagging economic growth and chronically low prices — a potential harbinger of long-term stagnation.
