China said it doesn’t fear a trade war with the U.S. and announced plans to slap tariffs on $3 billion of imports from the U.S. in the first response to President Donald Trump’s ordering of levies on Chinese goods ranging from pork to steel pipes.
In a statement on Friday, hours after Mr Trump instructed US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to slap tariffs on at least $50 billion in Chinese imports, China’s Commerce Ministry said it plans a 25 percent tariff on US pork imports and recycled aluminium, and 15 percent tariffs on American steel pipes, fruit and wine.
“This is an opening gambit by China, signalling that the imposition of tariffs by the US will elicit what Beijing views as a proportionate retaliatory response,” said Eswar Prasad, a former chief of the International Monetary Fund’s China division and now a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
“China has the ability to inflict significant economic harm on US exporters of certain goods and can also use other overt as well as covert actions such as supply chain disruptions to hurt US manufacturers.”
“The Chinese will likely react moderately to this,” said Dennis Wilder, a Bush administration Asia policy adviser at the National Security Council.
On Thursday Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said imports of US soya beans, airplanes, cotton and cars could be viewed as examples of “unequal” trade. The US also “refuses to export what China wants”, Hua said, possibly referring to restrictions on technology and military sales.
The Trump administration argues that years of negotiations have failed to produce results. Dozens of industry groups, however, sent a letter to the president warning that “the imposition of sweeping tariffs would trigger a chain reaction of negative consequences for the US economy, provoking retaliation; stifling US agriculture, goods, and services exports; and raising costs for businesses and consumers”.
Juthy Saha
China Plans to Hit US with Tariffs as Trade War Arrives
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