In a statement released on Tuesday (8), the Chinese government called US President Donald Trump’s threats to impose additional 50% tariffs on China as of Wednesday (9) a massive “mistake” if the Asian country does not back down from imposing 34% tariffs on US products.
“The [Trump] threat to raise tariffs against China is a new mistake, and once again exposes its extortionate nature, and China will never accept this,” the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. The US imposed a 104% tariff on Chinese imports starting Wednesday, April 9, after Beijing did not back down on his 34% retaliatory tariff on imports from the United States by Trump’s deadline, which ended at noon Tuesday.
The measure was announced by China at the end of last week in response to the US president’s announcement of “reciprocal” tariffs, which added up to 34% (on top of the 20% already accumulated) on Chinese products. The Ministry of Commerce said that if the US escalates its tariffs, China will decisively adopt more “countermeasures to protect its rights and interests”.
“If the United States insists on acting arbitrarily, China will fight to the end,” said the statement, which classifies Trump’s ‘tariffs’ as a practice of “unilateralism and intimidation”.
The ministry urged the US to “revoke all unilateral tariff measures against China, stop economic and trade repression and resolve differences with China through equal dialog, based on mutual respect”.
“Pressure and threats are not the right way to deal with China,” the text concluded.
China possible countermeasures
Six possible countermeasures were disclosed by a profile administrated by the deputy editor-in-chief of the Xinhua News Agency, Liu Hong. The account has millions of followers on the various networks and often publishes information not published in the official media, based on unspecified sources.
The six possible countermeasures would be:
- Significantly increase tariffs on US agricultural products such as soybeans and sorghum.
- Ban the import of US poultry meat into China.
- Suspend China-US cooperation on fentanyl.
- Countermeasures in the services trade sector.
- Ban the import of US films
- Start an investigation into the benefits that US companies have obtained from intellectual property in China.
Some of these actions will intensify what have been China’s responses to Trump’s decisions. Trump has already imposed three tariff measures against China since the beginning of the year: 10% on all Chinese products, announced on February 1, another 10% on March 3, and another 34% on April 2, as part of the “reciprocal tariffs” announced for around 90 countries.
With each announcement, the Chinese government announced retaliatory procedures. For example, in response to Trump’s second tariff measure, China implemented a 15% tariff on chicken, wheat, corn and cotton, among others, from the US.
JD Vance attacks China
In an interview to Fox News channel on Friday (4), US vice-president JD Vance stood by Trump’s tariff policies against China. One of his speeches went viral and was heavily criticized on Western and Chinese social media.
Vance said: “what has the globalist economy gotten the United States of America? And the answer is, fundamentally, based on two principles – incurring a huge amount of debt to buy things that other countries make for us”.
“To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture” he added.
In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said that it was “surprising and sad that the vice-president would make such ignorant and impolite remarks”.
Regarding possible negotiations between the two countries, Lin Jian said that “what the US has done shows no intention of serious talks. If the US really wants to have talks, it should show an attitude of equality, respect and reciprocity”.
