US feeling effect of Chinese retaliatory tariffs

The United States of America is now feeling the impact of retaliatory tariffs imposed by China with heavy import duties worth tens of billions of dollars on US goods including lobsters, soybeans, electric cars and whiskey.

Beijing said on Saturday that it was responding in “equal scale” to Trump’s tariff rise on Chinese goods, in a conflict over China’s estimated $336bn trade surplus and technology policy that companies worry could quickly escalate and chill global economic growth.

China “doesn’t want a trade war” but has to “fight back strongly,” a separate statement from China’s commerce ministry said.

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Authorities in China moved to impose huge tariffs worth $50 billion on the US and have averred that they would impose measures ‘of the same scale on America.

White House had earlier announced a 25 percent tariff on $50bn worth of Chinese goods over “unfair trade practices”.

The goods targeted by the levies “contain industrially significant technologies”, a White House statement said.

In a related development, the EU had retaliated in kind against the US over its imposition of tariffs last week by unanimously endorsing a plan to impose high import duties on American products.

There is now a looming threat of a global trade war after the move by the EU which is in direct response to Washington’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada EU and Mexico.

According to reports the retaliatory tariffs by the EU against the US’ painful duties should be in place by late June or early July even as the “counter-balancing measures” still need to be adopted by the European Commission, whose next meeting is scheduled for June 20.

 

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