Zack, Jenn, and Alex examine Trump’s trade war with China, which appears to be back on after negotiations failed to produce a deal. They run through how we got here, what’s happened so far in terms of escalating tit-for-tat tariffs, and what the costs of economic tensions between the world’s two largest economies are for ordinary Americans, Chinese citizens, and the world. On Elsewhere, they discuss a disturbing story about a Malaysian teenager who died by suicide after polling her Instagram followers on whether she should live or die — and what this says about the problems of managing social media’s dark side worldwide.

Links:

Our colleague Matthew Yglesias has an explainer on Trump’s China trade war.

Some recent research shows the complexity and murkiness of the debate over US job losses from trade with China.

The New York Times has a great piece outlining the various ways China manipulates US companies that want to do business in China, including forcing them to hand over valuable intellectual property.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics has a timeline of the US-China trade war.

Here’s a really good episode of Marketplace from September 2018 that explains why prices on goods don’t go up immediately in a trade war.

The IMF estimated that the trade war may cause a 0.2 percent slowdown in the global economy.

Jessica Chen Weiss explains at the Washington Post how China is rolling out nationalist propaganda over the trade war.

We played a CNN clip of a conversation with a farmer.

A brief description of the Malaysia Instagram story.

A list of international suicide prevention hotlines.

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