[ad_1]
The United States launched Friday hostilities with China by imposing tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of Chinese products, Beijing immediately retaliating and denouncing "the biggest trade war in economic history."
At 00:00 Washington time (0400 GMT) came into force the punitive tariffs decided by Donald Trump on a total of 34 billion dollars of Chinese imports including automobiles, hard disks or components of
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has stated that retaliation came into effect "immediately" afterwards. The official news agency, China New, said that "additional duties of 25 percent" had been imposed on an "equal" amount of US goods.
Beijing had previously warned that it would impose tariffs on $ 34 billion. dollars of US imports, thus giving Washington blow for blow.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce earlier accused the Trump administration earlier of launching "the biggest trade war in economic history to date". and badured that the country would defend its rights with the World Trade Organization (WTO).
US tariffs account for 25% of 818 Chinese products.
A second batch of taxes on 16 billion imports, which is currently under review by USTR Robert Lighthizer, will enter into force soon, said Trump who spoke about a delay of "two weeks" "
-" Buy Chinese "-
In total, $ 50 billion of annual Chinese imports will be affected by US measures to compensate for what the Trump administration considers to be the China's intellectual property and technology theft
The United States should not stop there as Donald Trump has asked Robert Lighthizer "to identify $ 200 billion worth of Chinese goods for additional taxes by 10%. "
And the US president has said he is ready to tax $ 200 billion of additional goods" if China raises its tariffs again "in reaction.
These measures could therefore bring to 450 billion the value of Chinese products taxed, the vast majority of imports from the Asian giant (505.6 billion dollars in 2017).
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, currently in Bulgaria, warned that a "trade war does not benefit anyone."
In the streets of Beijing, consumers were worried about a possible price increase following taxes on US products. But they said they were supporting China in the opening trade war.
"I'm just here to buy water, but I'll do my best to buy Chinese," Mr Yang, a Beijing supermarket customer, told AFP.
– What consequences? –
This Sino-US confrontation occurs in a context of tense relations between Washington and the rest of the world. Since early 2018, Donald Trump has triggered a trade dispute by imposing tariffs on Canadian, European and Chinese goods, deeming international trade unbalanced and against the US
The majority of experts warn against the potential damage of such a policy, not only to the US economy, but also to the world economy
US companies have said they are already feeling the impact with rising prices. Others have expressed fears about their market shares in China.
These warnings have left marble behind Mr. Trump, who had swept the arguments on Tuesday in a tweet. "The economy is probably doing much better than in the past, before we solve the problem of unfair trade agreements with each country," he said.
The previous day, his trade secretary, Wilbur Ross, had said that the forecast of the coming slowdown in US economic growth was "premature and probably inaccurate."
On the Chinese side, a central bank official said that "the trade war will slow the growth of the Chinese GDP by 0.2 percentage point" in 2018. He however estimated that the new US taxes would have a "limited impact" on the Chinese economy.
bur -faa-bur-ehl / bar / spi
© 2018 AFP. All rights of reproduction and representation reserved. All information reproduced in this section (news, photos, logos) is protected by intellectual property rights held by AFP. Therefore, none of this information may be reproduced, modified, reposted, translated, exploited commercially or reused in any way without the prior written consent of AFP.
[ad_2]Source link
