Is the US shooting itself in the foot with tariffs on Chinese rare earth elements?

1stSgt Nelson Kerr in this case i believe you’ll find times are changing... the Chinese put up with alot. But they revolt when things become intolerable.

Xi is worried... things are becoming intolerable.

Sgt Wayne Wood - It is possble for them to b3e overloaded with pain, thast is how Mao won in the first place, but een a devastating trade war is unlikely to reach that level of pain, I believer you would need something like the return of the cultural revolution of the great famine, long before that any democratic movement would simply have been fired when things simply got as bad as the comparatively trivial Great Depression.
If things for the current Chinese become as bad as they were for the parents of the current generation, things are likely to come apart, but Xi does not look to be headed in to Mao territory quite yet. If he starts killing by the millions, or tens of millions thing might change.

The peasants were revolting & the economy was teetering lang before now... before Obummer, before Bush....

Sgt Wayne Wood - The peasants in general are far better off than the were a few decades ago. And if people complain too much about the economy lagging or even sinking they know that they can end up as goo in task treads with a word. The lessons of Tienanmen Square have not been forgotten, there even if they have mostly beenforgotten here, The "Peoples" ' Army is doing quite well as always so thinking that they will revolt is probably unwarranted. There will n be no revolutions until something happens that convinces the Chinese, including the military, that the " Favor of heaven " has moved on, That culture follows different rules.
Also if you think that China is a fierce competitor now, what they would be without the parasites that run the Communist party and government would be astounding. They even more than the Brits are a nation of shopkeepers and traders, and have been that since before any of the current European nations existed.