The US isn’t the only nation China has unfair trade with. We’re just the biggest by far. Other nations are silently cheering Trump on.
I heard Rush say today that we had twice the GDP of China with only one third the population.
True, but there are significant exceptions. On another thread it was noted* that the EU runs a much smaller deficit with China than the US does. (This is especially noteworthy given that the EU is a close second to the US in GDP, and it runs an overall trade surplus with the non-EU world.) A trade deficit with China is ok if you can use it as part of an overall positive...
It was also noted that Germany runs a trade surplus with China. Other countries do too. How? Well, here's one example:
https://www.quora.com/Do-any-countries-have-a-trade-surplus-with-China
While I do not agree 100% with the author of the above, I do agree a key thing here is to maintain a tech edge, and that is where even the Euro's are on board when it comes to intellectual property theft. The Chinese, and by that I mean the people, not just the leadership, have this sort of "collectivist" notion that if I invent a better widget, EVERYBODY has a right to the design. After that, it is just a matter of who can work harder, study in school better, hone their pencils or cut corners sharper, more efficiently engage in corruption, or whatever... And they are very good at all those things. This is VERY hard to negotiate away in a way that can be enforced: It's not just successful for them, it's "bred in the bone", to quote Star Trek TNG's Commander K'Nera.
Nonetheless, we have to make it too painful to the Chinese to not change their ways, and make it profitable for both sides to both compete and cooperate -- it CAN be done.
Unfortunately, to get this done in a reasonable time frame, we end up for the most part chasing Chinese mfg. to other countries (Vietnam, Philippines, etc.) This likely helps on the IP front, as well as pressuring China. (The smaller countries are likely to be more cooperative on the IP issue, than China readily is.) But, it may not help our overall trade deficit by much, for a while.