China and the United States have been engaged in a trade war for more than a year.

The two nations have alternated in a tit for tat, placing escalating tariffs on goods imported from the opposite country.

Yet, over the past week, this commercial war between two of the world's economic superpowers seems to have entered a new phase,

and the American and Chinese economies are showing signs of slowing.

Many governments and companies had hoped that these signs of economic weakness would push President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to make a deal.

Instead, over the past week, we've seen some conflicting statements from Trump about his trade war strategy and new tariffs from China.

Among those tweets was an extraordinary edict from the President of the United States.

Trump wrote that he hereby ordered US businesses to move out of China.

At that point, many of you reached out to ask me the very question, can he do that?

So can a President order American companies to do as he wishes?

How might Trump make it harder for companies to do business in China and has a slow down of American business there actually worked to bring China to the bargaining table?

This is Kenny, do that. A podcast that explores the powers and limitations of the American presidency. I'm Alison Michaels.

I asked the Post's Global Business Reporter, Gene Whalen, to walk me through both the US and Chinese positions in this escalating trade war between two of the world's economic superpowers.

The US had long complained that China had used unfair trade tactics, that it was stealing America's intellectual property, that it was unfairly subsidizing its own companies, that it was blocking US companies from entering the Chinese market.

Trump finally said we're going to start imposing tariffs on products that we import from China.

China retaliated by doing the same, by tariffing US products as they entered China.

And we kept going back and forth like that. And at the same time, both sides were also holding talks trying to come to some resolution that would end the tit for tariffing.

And so, the US has decided that China hasn't really agreed to change its ways. It hasn't really agreed to stop some of the non-market practices that it has been carrying out for years.

Apparently, the US doesn't feel China has agreed to enough changes to really resolve the problem.

Okay, so all of that escalation brought us to this past week, where on Friday, the day started with China announcing that it would impose new tariffs on $75 billion in goods beginning this fall.

What does that mean at this point for China to impose this level of new tariffs? What tangible changes might those new tariffs bring?

It just means that an even greater number of US products become more expensive for Chinese importers to buy.

...