Beijing warns of ‘people’s war’ against US

The call between Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Liu, a confidante of President Xi Jinping, was the highest-level contact between the two governments since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese goods on Thursday. Fears of a trade war roiled financial markets after Beijing retaliated against the Trump administration’s tariff hikes by threatening import duties on USA goods. “This won’t be good for growth, won’t be good for geopolitical reasons”, he said.

The Chinese, it said, “possess a level of endurance that the USA can not compete with”. China’s top economic officials, a number of whom were educated in the USA, are known for their savvy of the American system and its electoral cycles. US agricultural exports to China stood at $19.6 billion past year, with soybean shipments accounting for $12.4 billion.

Williams estimated that the $506 billion that China exported to the United States drove around 2.5 percent of its total gross domestic product, and the $50-60 billion targeted by the USA tariffs contributed just around 0.25 percent.

Zhang Zhaoxiang, senior vice president of China Minmetals, said that while the state-owned mining group’s steel exports to the USA are tiny, the impact could come indirectly.

Electrical goods and tech are the largest USA import items from China.

The WTO ruling “proves that the USA side has violated WTO rules, repeatedly abused trade remedy measures, which has seriously damaged the fair and just nature of the worldwide trade environment, and weakened the stability of the multilateral trading system”, China’s commerce ministry said late on Wednesday.

He said: “There is certainly scope to pursue China through the WTO and there is a lot the United States could be doing that we haven’t done”.

He also said China would push forward property tax legislation and implementation, while further improving the transparency and efficiency of fiscal budget management.

China also hopes the USA will stick with the Iran nuclear agreement, a deal both Bolton and Trump have harshly criticized. USA trade representative Robert Lighthizer has said the goal is to pressure China to change practices, and plans to target 1,300 product categories, while limiting harm to United States consumers and companies.

Jacob Parker, Beijing-based vice president of China operations at the U.S.

“The strongest companies and economies are those that are open – those that thrive on diversity of people and ideas”, said Cook, who on Saturday called for “calm heads” in the brewing US-China trade dispute. They threatened war, and not just the kind over trade, echoing the kind of language being used on the other side of the Pacific. But now many worry about the economic blowback from his combative approach. Officials view the US domination of leading technologies as a challenge to its own interests.

Speaking from China, Trade expert Stephen Jacobi says New Zealand businesses shouldn’t panic just yet.

“China has already expressed a willingness to make concessions on market access without technology transfer, and the tariff announcement is not definitive, as the recent steel tariffs illustrate”, said UBS Wealth Management global chief investment officer Mark Haefele.

China overtook Japan as the No. 1 foreign holder of U.S. Treasurys in September 2008 in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Still, some economists warn that if trade war escalates, it could cause long-term pain to the Chinese economy.