WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. and Chinese governments have been flashing a lot of bravado just before firing the first shots in a conflict that risks erupting into a mutually damaging trade war.

“China will not bow in the face of threats and blackmail, nor will it be shaken in its resolve to defend global free trade,” a spokesman for Beijing’s Commerce Ministry declared Thursday, one day before the two sides were to subject billions of dollars of each other’s goods to punishing tariffs.

President Donald Trump, who ran for the White House on a vow to force China and other nations to reform their policies, has insisted that a trade war would be easy to win.

Yet among the people and business in both countries that are suddenly under threat from higher costs, closed-off markets and deep uncertainties, there’s far less confidence. A trade war between the world’s two biggest economies will leave casualties — from makers of musical instruments to farmers in America’s Midwest to a manufacturer of soldering irons south of Shanghai.

In some areas and industries, pain is already being felt.

“There’s going to be an awful lot of battles lost on the way,” said Tim Velde, a fourth-generation farmer in western Minnesota’s Yellow Medicine County who is bracing for China’s tariffs on American soybeans. “I don’t see anybody winning.”

Tong Feibing, general manager of China’s Ningbo Top East Technology Co., which makes soldering irons and had been exporting 30 percent of its output to the United States — before sales plunged in advance of tariffs — is worried.

“There is a chance the company will lose money and might bankrupt,” Tong warned. “I will do whatever I can, including layoffs.”

At 12:01 a.m. Eastern time Friday, the United States was set to slap tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese products. And Beijing was ready to respond in kind. From there, the hostilities could escalate quickly and drastically. Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on up to $450 billion in Chinese imports — nearly 90 percent of all goods China sent the U.S. last year — if Beijing continues to retaliate and doesn’t yield to Trump’s demands.