China has once again threatened to slap retaliatory tariffs against the United States in response to the Trump administration's trade policies, this time targeting $60 billion in U.S. imports with tariffs ranging from 5 percent to as high as 25 percent.
The Chinese government has said that it will make a final decision on if, when, and how these tariffs will be implemented next month.
On March 1, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would be slapping a 25 percent tariff on all steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on all aluminum imports. China responded with a 178.6 percent tariff on the roughly $1 billion in sorghum that the U.S. imports to China each year.
The U.S. hit back with tariffs on 1,300 Chinese goods worth $50 billion. China countered with more tariffs on another $50 billion, and threatened that it would respond to every Trump tariffs with an equal tariff of its own.
During a July 20 CNBC interview, Trump said that he was willing to put tariffs on all $505.5 billion dollars worth of goods that China exports annually to the U.S.
“We’ve been ripped off by China for a long time,” Trump declared during the interview.
China's Commerce Ministry said it would target 5,207 types of U.S. imports worth $60 billion, with tariffs amounting to 5, 10, 20, 0r 25 percent. In a statement announcing the proposed tariffs, the Chinese government said that it was “forced to act” in response to a recent U.S. threat to raise the tariff rate on $200 billion in Chinese imports from 10 to 25 percent.
In 2017, the U.S. only exported $123.9 billion worth of goods to China last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, so China cannot keep matching U.S. tariffs with tariffs of its own on the same quantity of goods. Instead, it has promised to use “qualitative and quantitative” measures to counter U.S. trade policies.
