Their energy, their focus, their attention. Your attention. All the time people spend in stress / outrage / fear / whatever in reaction to these events, that's time and energy not available to look at the news that get less coverage (which are usually the more important).

It also sucks all the air out of other internal political discussion - US trade relations take #1 priority and so everything else either gets forgotten or put on hold.

Easy way to set your opponents back when you have the upper hand like the US does.