China said Friday it would raise tariffs on US goods to 125 percent but would ignore further levies by President Donald Trump because it no longer makes economic sense for importers to buy from America.
After a week of market mayhem as the world’s two largest economies took turns to put up trade barriers, Beijing dismissed Trump’s mounting brinkmanship as a “joke” and a “numbers game”.
China accused Trump of unleashing turbulence in the market with the sweeping tariffs that has hit the world, and said the United States “should bear full responsibility” for the chaos.
Trump has deployed sweeping tariffs, including painfully higher levies for dozens of major economies, as a stick to force manufacturers to base themselves in the United States and for countries to lower barriers to US goods.
But following market turmoil this week, he blinked first in his push to remodel the post-war system of global commerce and froze many tariffs for 90 days, although he raised them for China to a staggering total of 145 percent.
Beijing’s latest round of retaliation brings its levies to 125 percent, effective Saturday.
But the Chinese finance ministry said further action by the US will be ignored because “at the current tariff level, there is no possibility of market acceptance for US goods exported to China”.
“The United States’ imposition of round upon round of abnormally high tariffs on China has become a numbers game with no practical significance in economics,” Beijing’s commerce ministry said.
“If the US continues to play the tariff numbers game, China will ignore it,” a spokesperson said.
Beijing also said it would file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization over the latest round of levies.
– ‘Beautiful thing’ –
Trump has acknowledged “a transition cost and transition problems” arising from his tariff strategy, but he has dismissed global market turmoil.