Donald Trump Is Not Very Good With Numbers #54,362: U.S. and China

Heather Long has a piece in the Washington Post detailing the demands that Donald Trump is making on China in exchange for not imposing tariffs. As she rightly points out, the list essentially amounts to asking China to remake its economy.

It would have been useful to point out how ridiculous this list of demands is, given the limited ability of the U.S. to hurt China with tariffs. The U.S. currently is importing a bit more than $500 billion a year from China. On an exchange rate basis, this...