At least tariffs would insure that we actually have a middle-class to pay said taxes. At the rate we are going we are losing our middle-class, and we are heading for a two-tier society, where a few people have a lot of money and everyone else is just barely getting by. Not a good idea. Our nation had tariffs for two hundred years, and we did just fine during that time, growing from a 13 colony small country to a 50 state global superpower. That's what tariffs did for us.
"Second, if China is currenty bankrupting and weakening itself with bad loans as you say, why fear it, let alone claim it's "eviscerating" the entire US economy?"
Because what is happening is known as "dumping", and it is the economic equivalent of a trade war. Once they have succeeded in driving our industry out of business they can raise prices to whatever they wish, and we will have no choice but to pay it or do without. Their government has adopted a policy of directly targeting our industrial base, and they are doing a great job of wiping it out.
"Third, China's currency has been pegged to the dollar continuously for the past 10 years. It was only about a year ago that the value of the dollar has started to fall (and the yuan along with it). So you can't claim that China deliberately is undervaluing its currency when, in fact, its value goes up or down the same as the dollar whichever way the dollar moves. For 9 of the past 10 years, the dollar's value rose tremendously and so did China's value right along with it, which actually went against China's interests."
By directly tying their currency to our currency, the Chinese government has adopted a policy of building in an advantage for their manufacturing base. The bottom line is that their entire government and manufacturing base are organized like a finely tuned engine with one goal in mind, that goal being the total dominance of all manufacturing in the world. There is a name for this kind of a government, that name being fascism. Manufacturing is the best way to create wealth, and by allowing China to dominate manufacturing, and allowing our manufacturing base to be obliterated by their unfair trade practices and economic policies, we are setting ourselves up for a big fall.
The day will come when we need the skills of master tool and die makers, and the skills of people who can run production lines and machines to build things like ships and weapons and command, control and communications equipment, and when the call goes out for these men to serve their country we are going to find they have all gone away, the old ones will be too old to work any longer, and there will be no young ones to take their place because they all went into nursing or law or government jobs or "service jobs" because they had no other options. This is sheer insanity, and will result in the eventual ruin of this nation.
What really cracks me up is that once upon a time our currency was backed by gold. Then Nixon took us off of the gold standard, and our currency was backed by the industrial capacity of the nation. You would want dollars because dollars could be used to buy the things we made. Now that we are eviscerating our manufacturing base, why would anyone want to accept dollars? We don't grow enough wheat, corn and soybeans to support a multi-trillion dollar economy. This is sheer madness! Once again, we are doing nothing more than selling them to rope with which to hang us!