At the very least it means revoking MFN, stringent Country-Of-Origin labelling laws for all products and strong quality controls.
What I would rather see is a spontaneous, voluntary boycott of Chinese goods by American consumers. I'm not holding my breath, though.
So then at least we're on a prudent course according to you.
The market is devaluing chinese goods even further, and the fedgov is overtly banning/recalling various chinese products in a very public way.
Remember, a grass-roots consumer boycott of Chinese toys in the US is piddling pin-prick to the chicoms. You might get 20% of FReepers to go along....maybe a few thousand people.
Yet, what the US Fedgov does, trickles down to dozens of entire countries, large and small around the world.
If you tried to go head-to-head confontation in a trade war, you get into a Cuba-vs-USA situation where everyone else in the world supports the poor American-Oppressed victim.
But the US Federal Government recalling lead-toys is not a transparently provacative state-to-state trade-war action, as it is merely done "to protect the safety of AMerican children."
Uncle Sam is the trusted big brother, and the little guys will eat the same cereal as big brother...but maybe not follow him into a fist-fight.
Dominican Republic health department seizes 'made in China' toys
Bush's yuan-revaluation-plus-china-stuff-is-crap policy is pretty deft, in my opinion.
We put the big hurt on them precipitating de-facto international boycotts while pressing them to further float the yuan, all the while, we look like the horribly aggrieved party.
Having a bumbling prez candidate come out and try to rile the local populist anti-china fires gets nothing. Which is why I think Hunter shows himself to be naive when he's dealing with this stuff, and that the sneaky chinese would roll that guy like a dumpling.