Tuesday, February 4, 2025 -China has retaliated against President Donald Trump's tariffs by implementing some of its own tariffs against the US amid a looming trade war.
The measures, announced by China's Finance Ministry, levy a 15 percent
duty on certain types of coal and liquefied natural gas and a 10 percent tariff
on crude oil, agricultural machinery, large-displacement cars and pickup
trucks.
Separately, China's Commerce Ministry and its Customs Administration
said the country is imposing export controls on tungsten, tellurium, ruthenium,
molybdenum, and ruthenium-related items to safeguard national security
interests.
China will further probe Google for alleged anti-trust
violations, according to a statement from the State Administration for Market
Regulation, though the specifics of the probe remain unclear.
The tariffs would go into effect next Monday.
This comes after Trump implemented his 10 percent tariffs on all Chinese
imports to the United States.
A White House spokesperson said Trump would not be speaking with
Chinese President Xi Jinping until later in the week.
During his first term in 2018, Trump initiated a brutal two-year trade
war with China over its massive U.S. trade surplus, with tit-for-tat tariffs on
hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods, upending global supply
chains and damaging the world economy.
To end that trade war, China agreed in 2020 to spend an extra
$200billion-a-year on U.S. goods - but that plan was derailed by the COVID
pandemic.
Its annual trade deficit then widened to $361billion, according to
Chinese customs data released last month.
'The trade war is in the early stages so the likelihood of further
tariffs is high,' Oxford Economics said in a note as it downgraded its China
economic growth forecast.
Trump has now warned he might increase tariffs on China further unless
Beijing stemmed the flow of fentanyl, a deadly opioid, into the United
States.
'China hopefully is going to stop sending us fentanyl, and if they're
not, the tariffs are going to go substantially higher,' he said on Monday.
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