Stuffing a protectionist trade pact down our throat will not help factory workers in Ohio who have been technologically displaced, but it will be fatal if it creates a trade war with China.

This is a really important part of the article, that he touches on a couple of times, but never fully unpacks.

Middle America resonated with the Trump message, but does not understand that the Trump plans in support of that message will only lead to further crushing losses across the board.

A trade war with China has fuckall to do with what's on the shelves at WalMart, and has everything to do with our access to the materials we need to build the things we make and sell to others.

Here's the simple problem, laid bare: Every single thing the US is known for making - technology products, cars, etc. - relies on an impossibly complex international supply chain. The steel for the hood of an F-150 comes from China. The palladium(?) in every single computer chip comes from one mine in China. The technically-difficult systems in cars - like brakes and transmissions - are made in Hungary and other countries with skilled manufacturing. (Jobs that Americans suck at. See the K-car.)

So a trade war with China looks like this: America ceases being able to get the raw materials it needs to make anything of value to anyone else.

And this is a problem. Because if you do not sell things outside your country, you are just moving the same $20 bill from your left pocket to your right pocket. Nobody is making any money, because there is no money coming in to be made. It's a zero sum game. (This is, of course, shorthand, but still broadly on point.)

That also means that the Federal Government loses its cash reserves, which it uses to subsidize things like gas, and corn, and dairy farms. So now we pay the same amount for fuel that everyone else in the world does - call it, $7/gallon, conservatively - we wind up with a glut of corn, spoiling in grain silos across the midwest with no potential buyers, and beef, milk, and pork disappear from grocery store shelves. (Remember the gas crisis of the 1970's? When store shelves went empty because trucks couldn't get the gas they needed to transport goods? Now imagine that, but with no products to transport inside the trucks, as well.)

Of course, all of these things are still available.... to the rich, who live on the coasts and don't need intrastate commerce to get their goodies. Who are also heavily invested in China, and earning righteous piles of money in their overseas accounts. But every other red-blooded American who doesn't have the ability to hide their money in an offshore company, and invest in foreign markets? AKA, the ones who voted for trump? Yeah, they are living in the world of the Walking Dead, without zombies.