The first part of your statement is generally accurate. However, the article is discussing tariffs the US has chosen. This is not something China is doing.
There is massive cognitive dissonance in trying to explain a lot of current events because they are so beyond what you expect to make sense.
Yesterday I was trying to explain to a friend about the children separated at the border and how the parents are then being deported alone and have to apply afterwards to try and find their children, and it took about seven attempts. She didn't understand what I was saying at first because she assumed I must have misspoke, as doing that doesn't compute.
The US courts have ruled that children are not to be incarcerated with their parents. It seems reasonable and moral that children are not punished for the crimes their parents commit. If the parents break the law and go to jail, the children go somewhere else, like foster care. When the parents get out of jail, they have to find their children to bring the family back together. This situation is not really hard to understand if you think that the government should enforce the current immigration laws.
The US immigration system has been so screwed up for so long that everyone just keeps kicking the problems down the road. Probably needs a complete deletion and start from scratch re-write, but that almost never works out like one hopes.
