How Trump’s Trade War Went From Method to Madness

It started with a carefully calibrated trade weapon, an algorithm that spat out a list of targets for an assault on China ordered up by a U.S. president determined to rebalance the relationship between the world’s two biggest economies. The goal: building leverage for negotiations aimed at forcing wholesale changes in China’s economic architecture while limiting the pain to businesses and consumers at home. “We’ve given this an enormous amount of thought,” Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, told senators in March 2018, highlighting the work of the computer model...