While You Weren't Looking, the Trade War With China Went off the Rails

While you weren’t looking — perhaps while you were watching impeachment hearings — the trade war with China went off the rails and lost its meaning.
To understand why, you have to know why the US started a trade war with China in the first place. It began with a very specific investigation, one using Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to examine claims of Chinese theft of US intellectual property.
The investigation determined what many in the business community had been talking about for years: that China abused its US partners, stole the IP of American companies, forced those companies to reveal their technology to Chinese counterparts, and muscled US firms out of the Chinese economy in favor of state-owned enterprises.