Beijing (AFP) – China said Tuesday it would impose tariffs of 15 percent on imports of coal and liquefied natural gas from the United States, in retaliation for Washington’s 10 percent levies on Chinese goods. Beijing’s finance ministry also unveiled 10 percent tariffs on imports from the United States of crude oil, agricultural machinery, large-displacement vehicles, and pickup trucks. The new measures were in response to the “unilateral tariff hike” by Washington over the weekend, Beijing said.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday announced sweeping measures against major trade partners, including Canada and Mexico, with goods from China facing an additional 10 percent tariff on top of the duties they already endure. Trump said the measures aimed to punish countries for failing to halt flows of illegal migrants and drugs, including fentanyl, into the United States. The US move, China said, “seriously violates World Trade Organization rules, does nothing to resolve its own problems, and disrupts normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the United States”.
Beijing’s tariffs, which come into force next Monday, were announced shortly after Trump said he would hold a call with President Xi Jinping in the next 24 hours.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had both earlier struck last-minute deals with Trump to tighten border measures against the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States, leading to a 30-day pause on threatened tariffs. Asian equities spiked Tuesday on news of the paused tariffs, and hopes that similar negotiations could relieve the levies against the world’s number-two economy provided extra optimism. However, traders pared some of those gains as China unveiled its measures.
Global stock markets had slumped Monday as Trump’s threat of sweeping 25 percent levies on imports from Canada and Mexico sparked fears of a global trade war. Trump said that after “very friendly” talks with Sheinbaum, he would “immediately pause” the tariffs on Mexico, and that his counterpart had agreed to send 10,000 troops to the US-Mexico frontier.
Tensions appeared higher between the United States and Canada; but after two calls with Trudeau, Trump said on Truth Social that the prime minister had “agreed to ensure we have a secure Northern Border, and to finally end the deadly scourge of drugs like Fentanyl”. Trudeau said Canada would deploy nearly 10,000 frontline officers to help secure the border, list drug cartels as terrorists, appoint a “Fentanyl Czar,” and crack down on money laundering. It was not clear the real extent of the changes on the Canadian border, given that authorities said in December they already had 8,500 personnel deployed.
Canada, China, and Mexico are the United States’s three biggest trading partners. The White House said earlier there had been a “heck of a lot of talks” over the weekend. “This is not a trade war, this is a drug war,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC, complaining that “the Canadians appeared to have misunderstood the plain language”. However, US government figures show that only a minimal quantity of drugs enter via Canada.
Ottawa had vowed to respond strongly to the tariffs. Canadians have booed the US national anthem at sporting events, canceled holidays in the United States, and boycotted American products. Its most populous province, Ontario, on Monday banned US firms from bidding on tens of billions of dollars in government contracts—and dumped a deal with Trump ally Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Trump has upped the pressure recently by calling Canada’s existence into question—once again advocating on Monday for it to become the 51st US state. A political crisis in the Canadian government over Trump’s tariff threats led to Trudeau announcing he would resign. Canadians now face elections as early as April.
Mexico has meanwhile been under heavy pressure to secure its border with the United States as Trump vows a massive crackdown on undocumented migrants. The US president—who has said that the word “tariff” is the “most beautiful word in the dictionary”—is going even further in his second term on the levies than he did in his first. He has insisted that the impact would be borne by foreign exporters without being passed on to American consumers, despite most experts saying the contrary. But the billionaire 78-year-old did acknowledge as he returned from a weekend at his Florida resort Sunday that Americans might feel economic “pain”.
© 2024 AFP
