The White House said China is now facing up to a 245 percent tariff on imports to the U.S. “as a result of its retaliatory actions,” another escalation in a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
The top potential tariff is higher than the previously stated 145 percent and was referenced in a fact sheet published by the White House late on Tuesday.
It accompanied an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that launched an investigation into the “national security risks posed by U.S. reliance on imported processed critical minerals and their derivative products.”
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian was asked about the 245 percent rate at a press briefing on Wednesday. “You can ask the U.S. side for the specific tax rate figures,” Lin said, China News Network reported.
“This tariff war was initiated by the United States, and China’s necessary countermeasures are to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests and international fairness and justice, which are completely reasonable and lawful.”
Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on imports from all countries. He has temporarily paused additional “reciprocal” rates set individually for each country depending on the trade barriers faced by the U.S. to allow time for negotiations on new deals.
The exception to that pause is China, which is facing increasingly higher tariffs from the U.S. and has responded in kind, among other countermeasures.
This week, China imposed more export controls on rare earths, which include materials used in high-tech products, aerospace manufacturing, and the defense sector.
Despite the eye-watering tariffs and tough rhetoric, both the U.S. and China have said they are open to talks on trade, though further tit-for-tat retaliation is likely in this conflict between two great powers.
Trump is the dumbest piece of human turd. This is beyond stupid.
Does this even matter?? The chilling effect of 245% vs 145% or even 45% has gotta be pretty marginal.
I feel like pretty soon he’ll announce a tariff of infinity plus one.
How many times is this going to be relevant?
Apparently exports to the US accounts for 2% of China’s GDP.
The real question is how much US GDP is relying on Chinese materials and products. I honestly have no idea, but I’m sure that it’s more than zero.
And any meaningful investment in to the US, unless you already have manufacturing there, doesn’t seem like a smart move. Tariffs (and policies in general) might change radically before the ink is dry on newspapers reporting latest changes.
Not to mention that building factories in the US will be quite expensive since a lot of those require machinery, building materials,… that also have to be imported. Even if you wanted to set up a whole domestic supply chain for those too you would need machines (and expertise) to make the first machines. Not to mention that it would take decades to setup all of that completely from scratch in the US and you would likely still have to import at least some raw resources.
Loads of rare earths are controlled by China (some estimates are 97% of all rare earth minerals), so yeah, I think they’re currently laughing their asses off at the US
It’s killing the board game industry right now.
Does Trump think he has the cards against China?
Does Trump think
Imma stop you right there
Yeah, he thinks he’s the master artist of the deal, nobody has ever made deals like him. Huge strong men have come up to him, tears in their eyes, saying “Sir! We’ve never seen a deal made like you made, ever!”
Or some shit.
Trump doesn’t care whether America has the cards as long as he is able to stay out of prison and make hundreds of millions grifting his base.
Don’t forget the insider trading while he’s playing global trade rollercoaster.
Though I’m equally sure that doesn’t work remotely as well as he and his posse figured.
This.
It’s like a wildfire, every time I look at the news the numbers have doubled again!
He’s really a very hard poker player, I’m sure China are going to drop their hand every moment now!
An embargo on China is crazy. I’m wondering just how long it’ll take before the real world catches up to the market.
I heard today that an iPad made wholly in the USA would cost €30.000
test
American importers, companies, and citizens pay every last cent of these tariffs. It’s an import duty. Not that it wasn’t evident, but Trump is thick as pig shit.
The worst bit is that that would be true at those tariff rates even if the supplier paid for it. it would just be priced in. In the end it is always the buyer who pays for additional costs of that magnitude. Virtually nobody has profit margins to just absorb that and those who do are selling luxury products and won’t reduce their profit margins either.
If the Republican administration wanted to win a trade war against China they could have really used some allies, to make sure they had equivalent size as a bloc. However they preferred to start a trade war with 182 fronts at once.
Those penguins didn’t even send someone to negotiate. They would have been useful allies.
just make it 100,000% already.
Just vote him out of office already surely that has to be possible
Our government is broken. First the House of Representatives have to vote to impeach a president. Then the senate has to vote to remove the president from office.
Trump was impeached by the, at the time, left leaning house of representatives in his first term but the right leaning senate didn’t vote to impeach him so he stayed in office.
At the moment, both the house and senate lean right so they aren’t likely to do anything. The supreme court also basically said the president is above the law so they aren’t likely to do anything either.
And by “left leaning” you mean “slightly extreme right than the other ones”.
left leaning house of representatives
*centre right
both the house and senate lean right
*from far right up to straight nazi nutjobs
Corrected for you.
It is not. Not until 2028, and that’s if we still have real elections by then, which is looking increasingly unlikely.
sweet summer child…
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They carved out an exception for electronics because Apple said moving manufacturing to America wasn’t doable. What if China decides to just shutdown the factory making iPhones?
Or, more likely keep it going while stealing IP and selling the phones themselves
Well, the only ones who are f-ed by this are the people in the US. I don’t hink anyone else is going to shed tears about this. Except maybe tears of laughter.
