This time, the editors of The Wall Street Journal waxed excited over President Donald Trump’s (R) responses to the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s export blocks controls on rare earths and related materials aimed at the United States.

First things first.

None of this [trade war] is good for the US and global economies.

The editors appear to be writing from a fantasy garret office. In what war do they imagine that one side suffers no harm at all? In the real world, wars damage all participants.

Then there’s this from the editors’ swampish imaginations.

Mr Trump started the fun by announcing on social media midday Friday that “some very strange things are happening in China!” He said Beijing has turned “very hostile” and is sending letters to the world announcing tighter controls on the export of “every element of production having to do with” rare-earth minerals.

There’s that fantastical editorial garret world again. This latest round was begun by the PRC’s Xi when he imposed those controls on rare-earths, processed rare earths, and any product from wherever exported that contains rare earth materials comprising 0.1% or more of the product’s value. Trump is merely responding to that attack rather than meekly lying down and forcing us to accept it.

But back up a bit, too, to a time of which the long-term memories of the editors seem broadly deficient. The PRC has been inflicting its trade war on us for years and years. It has been stealing our technologies through espionage and hacking.

It has been forcing technology transfers from private enterprises as a condition of their doing business in the PRC, a condition only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

It has been forcing private enterprises to accept as partners PRC-domiciled companies as a condition of those foreign enterprises doing business in the PRC, a condition only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

It has demanded PRC government-approved back doors into foreign companies’ operating software as a condition of those foreign enterprises doing business in the PRC, a condition only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

It has demanded PRC apparatchiks in foreign companies’ management teams operating PRC-domiciled arms, a requirement only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

The PRC has begun dumping its industrial output on the international market at below production cost pricing nominally to shore up the economic malaise of its own overproduction, but in truth to bankrupt other nations’ domestic industrial producers—including in the US—and so gain market share to the point of other nations’ dependency, especially ours, on PRC output.

Trade wars aren’t easy, as the editors noted in their headline. But trade wars are made the harder when folks who should know better don’t even understand the war actually progress.