Trump's trade war with China is about to take off


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The Trump administration will impose new tariffs of 10% on 200 billion dollars of Chinese products just after midnight ET (noon in Beijing), covering thousands of products, including food seasonings, baseball gloves, network routers and industrial machinery. China said it would retaliate immediately with new taxes of 5% to 10% on $ 60 billion of US products such as meat, chemicals, clothing and auto parts.

Aninda Mitra, senior analyst at BNY Mellon Investment Management, said in a note that the latest rates had been announced last week.

Starting on Monday, President Donald Trump's new tariffs on China will cover about half of the goods sold in the United States. The latest round involves thousands of products purchased by US consumers, including hundreds of millions of dollars in furniture and electronics imports. US tariffs imposed at the beginning of the year mainly affected industrial products.

The measures are aimed at punishing China for what the Trump administration regards as unfair commercial practices, such as the theft of intellectual property.

Beijing rejected US claims, accusing the United States of protectionism and intimidation. He fought back with customs duties on US goods worth more than $ 110 billion.

A new escalation is already emerging.

The latest US tariff series is expected to increase from 10% to 25% by the end of the year. China has not yet specified how it would react.

Trump also threatened tariffs on 267 billion dollars of Chinese products. This would mean that US measures effectively cover all annual exports of goods from China to the United States (the total for 2017 was about $ 506 billion).

China, which imports much less from the United States, is short of new products to target, but analysts believe it still has other opportunities for retaliation. They include billing even higher tariffs, imposing import quotas, restricting Chinese citizens' travel to the United States for study and tourism, and reducing taxes for companies affected by tariffs.

& # 39; Impasse & # 39;

Trump administration officials said the ultimate goal was to achieve free trade with zero tariffs and zero subsidies from both sides. But analysts say Beijing is more suspicious of US intentions.

"China is increasingly worried about the fact that US motivation is now trying to contain and contain China," said Timothy Stratford, managing partner of Covington & Burling's law firm. in Beijing last week. "I think we're going to have a stalemate for a while."
Trump's decision to move quickly with the latest tariffs seems to have hindered plans for further negotiations between the two parties. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had invited Chinese negotiators to Washington to resume negotiations, but a senior White House official said on Friday that no new meetings were scheduled for the moment.

Many US business leaders are in agreement that China's business practices need to be addressed, but they oppose the use of tariffs, which are paid by the companies. companies that import the products. CEOs must now decide to absorb costs or pass them on to consumers. Some may find a new supplier outside of China, but it takes time.

Thousands of companies have asked the government to exclude certain products from the tariff schedule, claiming that they could not find any other supplier outside of China for the items they needed . None of their requests have been granted so far.

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Businesses and consumers pay the price

Large companies are already warning damage. US chip maker Micron said Thursday that the new wave of US tariffs could hurt profits in the coming year. Chinese tariffs could hurt American energy companies considering exporting liquefied natural gas in abundance.

US consumers are likely to see prices rise this fall for a variety of household products, ranging from shampoo to food and dog appliances, said Doreen Edelman, co-chair of the firm's global business team. Baker Donelson lawyers.

Walmart said the new rates could force them to raise prices on a wide variety of items, and Target said working families would pay more for essential school supplies such as notebooks, calculators and binders. Procter & Gamble also warned that rates could increase the cost of many of its core products.

Chinese companies are also feeling the effects.

Feng Renhao said his trading company in the northeastern city of Dalian had suffered "a huge impact".

She had been buying seafood from American companies for over 20 years. But after China imposed 25% tariffs in July on US seafood products, Feng said he should abandon his US suppliers and turn to Canada and the United States. European countries.

"We hope the trade war will come to an end soon," he told CNN.

Nanlin Fang and Donna Borak contributed to this report.

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