The horrifying thing is that they don't have to. They hold all the cards now. They can drop their new trade barriers at will. Maybe they'll ask for concessions. Maybe they'll leave them in place to kill off troublesome competitors. Maybe they'll coerce the affected companies into selling to Chinese-owned interests at a steep discount. Maybe they'll just take a bunch of bribes.
This is how a trade war looks. And we're losing. Badly.
> They hold all the cards now
What do you mean "now?" With the amount of trade imbalance they had the ability to simply block exports at any time. It perhaps only works once but it's a very powerful lever.