Ehm, I think you've got that reversed.
US is imposing trade barriers on other countries, to slow down their economic growth. In the simplest most abstract explanation. To stop them growing, while the US is not so much, so the USD remains strong and will buy you more.
China cant do much, because they have engineered themselves a fast growing economy. If that stops too abruptly - they'll have themselves a few revolutions on hand. So what they gonna do? Stop manufacturing iPhones? It will hurt them more.
The whole point of beginning a trade ('tarrifs') war is, when you know that you will win it. And when you don't want to produce 'win/win' outcomes (where for example china currently wins a little more), which is what free trade produces.
China now can retaliate, but what they gonna do? Not buy soy from american farmers? The us can take that...
Escalating that thing currently isn't on anyones to do list (except for the US), because the US beats any other big economy in terms of being 'self sufficient' / not heavily dependent on one single other countries economy.
Outcome for a US citizen: Some chinese goods will become more expensive, because the business usually hand on their trade expenses down to the customer. Which in return will incentivize producing some goods locally again (automation, not a big jobs winner), or more likely find different ways of sourcing them.
The US is literally slowing down chinas growth and china has not very much they can do (they have hundreds of billions initiatives to open up new trade routes and markets to europe and eastern europe (reducing transport cost)) but they arent finished yet.
Militarily they can't do much either. They can publically complain - which they do. Then we can point at Hong Kong, which we do. Thats all.
Stop the panic. If its a war - the US certainly isnt loosing it.
What isn't clear to me is the difference in attention when Trump does it as opposed to the EU. I've mentioned in another thread that the EU for example implemented tarrifs of almost 50% on bicycle products from china. In January of this year they also implemented tarrifs on E-Bikes with the default being 83.6%. There's different tarrifs for some manufacturers, notably a subsidiary of Taiwanese company GIANT who is the world's biggest bike manufacturer, their Chinese E-Bike subsidiary is hit with 27.5% import taxes.
China needs USD more so than it needs EUR.
The leaver here is, that china is a manufacturing giant, that can source much of the stuff they do themselves by now - but still have dependencies in important industries that are 'probably designed' so they cant get rid of important dependancies (think 'the software every android phone runs', there are others in other fields as well), so part of their dependencies have to be paid in USD. If they sell less to the US - guess what happens to their USD supply.
Bicycles, as huge as that industry might be for them - isn't a key economic sector by any means.
Also - if it doesnt hurt them production wise, or in sourcing goods (so only 'sales' wise), they don't mind so much. They will do empty spending on 'steel goods' they produce - which will then land on a landfill - directly. That they dont care about - as long as they can control it (currency fluctuation (impact)).
In simple, when the US does it, targeting key sectors (cars in germany, electronics manufacturing in china), it hurts more. (dependency wise.)
Like it or not, as things stand now there can be no victory in a trade war with China.
Here is the deal.
Trade configurations:
win/win: China will currently win more than the US.
lose/lose: China will currently loose more that the US.
The idea that china is this mega monolith you cant do anything about but to agree to their terms, currently gets challenged by US trade policy. And china has a real issue in terms of demographics.
They have developed a lower middle class - but the country is very diverse, so they have regions that still are very poor. They had an issue with family planning, where the one child policy has produced an aging society, which is fine at the moment, if productivity can be kept high, but also comes with huge social issues.
So if growth for them - stops - societies won't be happy. (Cut off expectations, huge old people problem, wealth distributed very unevenly, ...). China is 'top dog' currently. Now the battle wages over how fast they raise to the top. And if they can get to first, before 'their fuel runs out' so to speak.
All quite normal, still..
This is the notion I'm following - btw:
The lecture is already 9 years old, so not 'current politics' exactly - but it describes in broad strokes, what seems to be relevant today.
