White House Announces Tech Tariffs, Investment Restrictions on China (axios.com)

The White House announced this morning a plan to levy a 25% tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese tech goods -- with the exact list to be announced next month -- as well as tech investment limits for Chinese nationals and entities. From a report: It also plans to pursue litigation at the World Trade Organization relating to Chinese intellectual property abuses. The big picture: It's a show of force that has surprised some sources close to the White House who believed Trump would defer any aggression towards China until after the North Korea summit. A source close to the White House who has a keen understanding of the internal dynamics on China told me that this is an "initial move in a long negotiation that shows the Chinese Trump is very serious -- and a move to balance the criticism that he was soft on ZTE."

Comments

Re:No suprise

[Lothsahn]

Not just "for some reason".

It's highly linked to a personality trait called openness. People who are high in openness are interested and emotionally get benefit/happiness from new ideas, thoughts, and concepts. People with this personality are generally very interested in becoming scientists and professors. Likewise, high openness correlates strongly with liberal political views. Therefore, it makes complete sense that there's a strong correlation between scientists/professors, and liberal political viewpoints.

Just imagining it makes sense -- conservatives generally want to embrace tradition and liberals want to change the world to make it a better place. Somewhere in the middle is good for society--too much change is chaos, and too little is stagnation.

Sources:
https://www.chicagoreader.com/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...