President Donald Trump is getting ready to launch the trade war against China that he has always wanted and that has the US business community worried.
While there is a broad consensus in Washington that the US needs a more muscular response to a rising China, there is concern the Trump administration appears to lack a strategy for ending the war it is about to start.
If the conflict in the offing were a military one, Washington would be awash with people warning the president to pay heed to the so-called Powell Doctrine that holds you do not start a conflict you do not know how to get out of. Put in those terms, Mr Trump’s trade war with China could be like invading Afghanistan, a quagmire through the ages.