This takes a bit of history to understand, but it actually started just before Reagan. The idea, here, is this:
No one wants war (especially after the fall of the Soviet Union). Economic warfare/sanctions/trade caused Soviet Collapse (along with our ability to maintain cold war efforts with a superior economic model to outpace Soviets). The Soviet Union spent themselves into collapse.
Now that the US has a trillion or so deficit at the time, we needed a new plan/strategy to prevent open war with China. The decisions made led to the US doing trade with China in order to irrevocably tie our economies together. The school of thought being, if one attacked the other, it absolutely devastate China's economy.
What ended up happening, however, was China becoming a power player in the world currency game. Over time, China learned they could get/maintain the upper hand on us through currency manipulation (intentional devaluation). The Chinese planned to subdue the US by using their overly devalued currency, draining US reserves to a point where there was no longer any chance for competition, and then suddenly valuating the Yuan to be worth much greater than the dollar. This would cause our economy to default, essentially, and Chinese would buy us out of our debt by taking over property in the US.
Much like they've done with Vancouver, and a few other places already in the US. What do you think was going on with the land in Nevada under Senator Reid's leadership? Cattle ranchers were trying to prevent the sell of American soil to godless commies by fighting the Feds. US people died so that Reid could sell more property to China.
At any rate, Trump was talking about this years ago. He knew where it would lead, and is currently taking the step necessary to roll back all that damage. If you really want to panic for a while, think about this:
The only way the US will EVER DIG OUT of this shit is if we somehow set the stage for a global currency reset. Think NESARA, but perhaps not exactly to the "T" of that plan (but something similar).
Right now, we're really at the mercy of our lenders (foreign investments in our Federal Reserve Debt). Until that gets, um, "restructured", we're actually quite fucked.