Trump administration publishes list of tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods

Donald Trump is readying tariffs on another $200 billion in Chinese imports, escalating a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

He said: “Chinese equities were amongst the worst performers today, with the Shanghai Composite dropping 1.8% after the US Trade Representative set out the $200bn of Chinese imports on which it intends to impose a 10% tariff”. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index also slid 0.7 per cent.

The abrupt escalation is “totally unacceptable”, said a Commerce Ministry statement.

“The tension has turned into an economic conflict and is not bound by trade”, said Raymond Yeung, chief greater China economist for Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.in Hong Kong.

Trump has been considering tariffs against China since his officials concluded in March that Beijing violates USA intellectual-property rights, such as by forcing American firms to hand over technology.

“Consumers will feel it and perhaps as early as Christmas”, said Mary Lovely, an economics professor at Syracuse University who studies trade.

China’s has hit back dollar-for-dollar, largely targeting agricultural products created to hurt Trump supporters. But China can gradually replace it by exporting to other countries, something it’s been doing for years anyway.

“Farmers have done poorly for 15 years”.

Ivanka’s company develops its goods exclusively in foreign countries (not exactly along the lines of her father’s hard-hitting slogan to “buy American and hire American”).

Trump has said the tariffs are meant to punish China for using unfair trade practices. Around half of USA propane exports went to Asia in 2017, displacing supplies from Middle Eastern countries and some regional production of propane.

“It’s extremely important that when two governments get into this kind of situation with each other that even if they are fighting on the official front, that they have something going on in the background that enables them at some point to declare a sort of ceasefire”, Rufus Yerxa, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Wednesday.

“We are stronger together than apart”, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation secretary general Jens Stoltenberg claimed in a retort to Mr Trump’s comments but the United States leader countered by asking how the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation alliance could be stronger when Germany is “making Russian Federation richer”, referring to energy pipeline deals Berlin recently has signed with Moscow.

Lighthizer said the initial $50 billion in USA tariffs were aimed at goods that “benefit from China’s industrial policy and forced technology transfer practices”. “I hope we can settle pretty soon”.

The tariffs will not be imposed until after a two-month period of public comment on the proposed list, but some U.S. business groups and senior lawmakers were quick to criticize the move.

The eventual goal is to impose tariffs on 40% of Chinese imports, the same proportion of US goods hit by Beijing’s retaliation, an official told reporters.

Connelly called the United States and China strategy of “placing unwarranted tariffs” on seafood products “misguided”, and warned that it will “only hurt workers and consumers in their own countries”.

President Donald Trump has threatened to tax as much as $US550 billion in Chinese products – an amount that exceeds America’s total imports from China a year ago. “The President made everyone well aware of them”. The Republican-controlled Senate voted 88-11 in favour of a non-binding resolution calling for Congress to have a role in implementing such tariffs.

“They are a vital trading partner, and we need to continue to do business with China without the sting of these tariffs”, said American Soybean Association President John Heisdorffer in a news release.

Just as the US President arrived in Brussels, however, the United Kingdom government announced it will send an additional 440 troops to help support the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation mission in Afghanistan.

The US Chamber of Commerce has supported Trump’s domestic tax cuts and efforts to reduce regulation of businesses, but it has been critical of Trump’s aggressive tariff policies.