Trump Tells China to Drop Retaliatory Duties or Face 50% Tariff Hike
Washington is threatening Beijing with even steeper duties if the country doesn’t lift the tariffs imposed in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s reciprocal duties.
On Friday, China announced 34-percent tariffs on American-made goods—a reaction to Trump’s Wednesday White House announcement, wherein he targeted the nation’s biggest trading partners with steep, double-digit duties. Now, Trump is hitting back—again—with a promise to impose additional 50-percent duties on Chinese imports to the U.S.
Trump took to Truth Social on Monday to issue the threat, saying the new tariffs add to China’s growing list of abuses, from “already record setting Tariffs, Non-Monetary Tariffs, Illegal Subsidization of companies, and massive long term Currency Manipulation.”
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The president said Beijing engaged in a trade war “despite my warning that any country that Retaliates against the U.S. by issuing additional Tariffs, above and beyond their already existing long term Tariff abuse of our Nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher Tariffs, over and above those initially set.”
If China does not withdraw its new tariffs by Tuesday, the U.S. will move forward with the new round of steeper tariffs on April 9, Trump added. “Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated! Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.”
The news, along with a quickly-debunked rumor that Trump planned to defer all April 9 reciprocal duties for 90 days, sent Wall Street into an uproar.
Monday morning saw the stock market plummet, with the S&P 500 losing 1.8 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 2.4 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite dropping 1.7 percent. A news report circulated that the White House might press pause on the tariffs, casued a blip of a rally that lasted just hours, after which the averages began to tumble again.
The president’s 10-percent universal baseline tariff took effect on Saturday, adding to the tumult. When asked about the state of the markets on Sunday evening, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, “I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
“We have to solve our trade deficit with China,” he added. “We have a trillion-dollar trade deficit with China, hundreds of billions of dollars a year we lose with China. And unless we solve that problem, I’m not going to make a deal.”
