Impact of the U.S.–China trade war on the operating performance of U.S. firms: The role of outsourcing and supply base complexity Abstract Multinational corporations have benefited tremendously from free trade in the past few decades. However, the dynamism of international relations, paired with the global recession, has rekindled the debate over frictionless trade. In this study, we examine how trade friction, created by tariff trade barriers, affects the operational performance of domestic fi...