China is promising to take "countermeasures" against U.S. President Donald Trump's plans to impose an additional $200 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports.
The new duties, which take effect next Monday, September 24, will begin at 10 percent, then rise to 25 percent on January 1, 2019. The tariffs will be imposed on thousands of consumer goods, including electronics, food, tools and housewares. The Trump administration exempted numerous other items from the new tariffs, including smart watches, Bluetooth devices, and infant car seats.
China's Commerce Ministry issued a statement Tuesday warning that it would respond to the new U.S. tariffs "to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests and the global free trade order." Beijing has previously released a list of $60 billions of American-made goods subject to retaliatory tariffs.
In the statement announcing the new tariffs, Trump warned that "if China takes retaliatory action against our farmers or other industries, we will immediately pursue phase three, which is tariffs on approximately $267 billion of additional imports."
China has previously said it will welcome new trade talks with Washington, but also suggested it would not engage in more negotiations if the United States imposed the tariffs.
In recent months, Washington and Beijing imposed 25 percent tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods headed across each other's border.
Earlier Monday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told the Economic Club of New York that the United States is "ready to negotiate and talk with China any time that they are ready for serious and substantive negotiations towards free trade to reduce tariffs and non-tariff barriers, to open markets, to allow the most competitive economy in the world, ours, to export more and more goods and services to China."
Trump declared on Twitter that the tariff increases he has imposed have boosted the U.S. economy, the world's largest.
"Tariffs have put the U.S. in a very strong bargaining position, with Billions of Dollars, and Jobs, flowing into our Country –and yet cost increases have thus far been almost unnoticeable," Trump tweeted. "If countries will not make fair deals with us, they will be “Tariffed!”
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