US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an order directing his trade representative to impose tariffs on a range of Chinese products. Along with the tariffs, new investment restrictions will be erected and actions will be taken against China through the World Trade Organization, the president said.
“The word that I want to use is reciprocal. When they charge 25% for a car to go in, and we charge 2% for their cars to come into the US, that’s not good,” Trump said. “That’s how China rebuilt itself.”
The president said that the tariff amount would be nearly US$60 billion, a bit steeper than the widely reported number of US$50 billion. He added that the administration is in ongoing talks with officials in Beijing on how to reduce the trade deficit, which Trump suggested was the largest bilateral trade deficit in the history of the world.
Meanwhile, China’s state-owned nationalist tabloid Global Times did not hold back in rallying the Chinese public for a response. “Chinese people, wake up! Trump has started war!,” read a headline on the publication’s Chinese-language website.
The news outlet has been warning in recent months that China is prepared to engage in a tit-for-tat battle with the US on trade, with editor-in-chief Hu Xijin saying on Wednesday that agricultural products will be the first to get hit. “China is far more resilient than the US to the pain,” Hu said on Twitter.
US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the administration expects retaliation from China, but is not concerned.
“There will be some ultimate retaliation, but I don’t think it’s going to be the end of the earth,” Ross told CNBC.
He added that the US$60billion number is a “tiny fraction” of the two countries’ economies.
“It’s not as though we’re blowing them up,” he said. “This is not going to put China into a depression. It’s not going to put us into a depression. This is simply trying to cure abuses.”
While the tariffs announced Thursday are ostensibly a retaliation for the alleged practice of intellectual property theft in the technology sector, Trump stressed the concept of reciprocity in all trade barriers during his announcement. In doing so, he implied he would seek to place levies on imported products based on tariff levels the same product exported to the same country would face.
Critics have warned that this tactic risks blowing up the WTO in flouting a fundamental principal of the global trading system, the principle of non-discrimination. Under WTO rules the United States extends something called most favored nation status to trading partners, unless the status is suspended by specific regulation, which means that tariff levels must be applied equally to all trading partners.
China has to stop appeasing US at one stage. Despite its’ efforts in recent decades to increase imports from US, the response was US close its markets, restrict investment, offensive bluster and threats, etc
Bye bye America pie!
All this so-called actions disguised as "TRYING TO CURE ABUSES", i.e. are mere facade of the greater geopolitical machinations of the Western bully actually aiming for global control and world domination under its agenda of One World Order, will never serve to establish world peace and socio-economic & political stability especially in the most vulnerable targeted Asian region.
This never-ending "tit for tat blame game" of the superpowers is fooling and dividing peoples within and among such countries, causing much destabilization and, of course, the Western bully loves that so much.
To the more informed knowledgeable, it will be recalled that many years back, when China was in the initial stage of its economic industrialization and free-market system development, the US had already been promoting a negative evil communist world image of China and that its looming development was merely a bubble, with its overheating growth rate as artificial and was bound to FAIL. But behind the scenes, this wily deceiver and excellent propagandist was transfering its manufacturing industries and establishing its large multinational corporations in China, in order to take advantage and exploit its huge market potential of over a billion population.
Meanwhile, the stupid lapdog political leaders such as in the Philippines, towed the US anti-communist propaganda, taking it as gospel truth, swallowing it all hook, line, and sinker, and looked the other way, missing the economic development opportunities of a growing China that was denied and stolen by the Great Deceiver and Bully from the West.????????????????
But, what is so foolish and comical now is that, the wily strategy of the US vs. China, to grab and exploit the market potential of its economic growth, has boomeranged and blown on its face (the US), and in the process plunged down its own economy and ruined the lives of American families who lost their jobs, homes, fell into the debt trap, and other miserable consequences of their ruthless political leaders’ adventurism and foreign meddling.????
AND THE US HAS THE GALL TO BLAME CHINA WHOSE LEADERS MERELY EXERCISED WISDOM IN HAVING THE FORESIGHT TO SEE THROUGH THE DECEPTIONS AND TRUE INTENTIONS OF THE WESTERN BULLY.
HOW PATHETIC AND RIDICULOUS.????????????????
It’s unfortunate that things have come to this, but China has been taking advantage of US trade for too long. It was the opening of America’s vast domestic market which fueled much of China’s development. More importantly, the US has educated millions of Chinese scientists and engineers, even Xi Jinping’s own daughter went to the US for study. On top of that, the US provided China with volumes of technology, but they still continue to steal technology. It’s a shame that China can’t show some gratitude to a country which has done so much to help it, but the CCP continues to unfairly use a wide range of tariffs and non-tariff bariers against US companies.
So you really thought mankind knows the way of peace, your in need of a history lesson!! asap!!
China is bullying smaller nations is ASEAN…..
CLAIMING TERRITORIES UNILATERALLY..
Are we all in consonant with this so called,WTO who agreed of the FREE TRADE AGREEMENT..In a EQUAL FOOTING..It should be a zero tariffs to all.Or selected..The Chinese are not FOLLOWING.And some others..Like the Philippines.m,we got 8 billion deficit..DJT jz implemented the Law..Their imported from China,us 2% and their Car to the CHINA, 25%….this UNFAIR.
Rich Tom good dream.who want their sub standard quality
Well said
China had abused US preferential treatment in doing business at American territories. It’s really time for them to look back that years ago their mode of transportation is simply the rickshaw.
Very good to start
All international trade deals should be based on a win win situation.A trade war between two giants will spill over and affect the rest of the world.The most vulnerable will be the poor countries. Hope good sense will prevail
Rich Tom no way to sub standard and toxic product from china.
You can’t compare China with USA USA is land of free and home of brave . China only copies . They have no freedom of people.