Isn't it funny how attempt in intervene always end up with counter-productive side effects?
Not always, just when the intervention is incompetent, and attempts to circumvent the long-accepted mechanisms for resolving international trade issues.
There's no question that economic "globalization" has displaced many workers in the United States. And that quite a few of them were left behind in the economic recovery that took place during the Obama Administration.
The United States also has legitimate complaints about some of the tariff barriers erected by our major trading partners, including several European countries which still practice a form of
dirigisme. (Of course, the United States is not entirely blameless in this regard: Canadian dairy? American sugar.)
These are appropriate issues for the Trump Administration to address.
The problem is that the few senior appointive policy-makers in the Administration who appear to appreciate the complexities of international trade have either been pushed out or marginalized because el señor Loco has an aversion to expertise and to the give-and-take that inevitably must take place when different governments (especially democratic ones, but even autocratic governments such as China's) attempt to satisfy their respective domestic economic constituencies.
The United States was the prime mover behind the establishment of the World Trade Organization and its predecessor as forums to resolve these complex international issues and, historically, the United States has tended to do quite well when it brought disputes before them. But bypassing the established international trade forum on the emotional whims of an erratic leader does indeed produce unexpected, but entirely unsurprising, results.
It's easy to start trade wars. It's difficult to contain them. The United States was largely responsible for creating a rules-based international trade system and now — at least, for the moment — the current national Administration seems to be abandoning it.