THE People’s Republic of China is ready for further escalation of its ‘Tariff War’ with the United States with its Commerce Department warning on April 21 that it will take “countermeasures” against countries willing to side with the United States in isolating China and hurting its interests.
This, after various mainstream media reported that President Donald Trump is using his tariff policy as a blunt instrument against other countries to pressure them to isolate China in exchange for the lowering of the tariff on their exports.
“Appeasement cannot bring peace, and compromise cannot earn one respect. China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests.
“If this happens, China will never accept it and will resolutely take countermeasures,” the ministry said.
While Trump has softened his stand by suspending the tariff hikes for 90 days, it stands pat on punishing China with the average tariff on Chinese exports now at 145 percent—and even over 200 percent on some specific items.
Instead of bowing down, China reciprocated by imposing 125 percent tariff on US exports to China, banning the export of rare earth minerals that are critical to America’s military industrial complex and suspending the delivery of Boeing passenger jets to China.
At the start of the global Tariff War announced by Trump on April 2 and to take effect on April 9, China said it would not back down and would “fight to the end.”
A report in the Irish Times on April 15 said a briefing paper circulated among senior Irish officials confirmed Trump’s strategy of forcing other countries, especially the EU, to move away from China in exchange for better tariff terms.
The paper was circulated after Ireland foreign and trade minister Simon Harris’s met with US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick in Washington a week before.
“To seek one’s own temporary selfish interests at the expense of others’ interests is to seek the skin of a tiger,” China’s commerce ministry explained.
In an earlier report, the Wall Street Journal said that Trump’s strategy is to use the tariff talks to push other countries to curb trade with China.
In return, these nations could secure reductions in US levies and trade barriers. The Trump administration has said it is in negotiations with more than 70 countries.
But the Commerce Ministry said China would in turn target all countries that fell in line with US pressure to hurt Beijing’s interests.
China earlier warned that it is the United States that is trying to isolate itself from the rest of the world and is trying to destroy the system of international trade that itself built after the end of World War 2.
The Australia-based Lowly Institute, in a report early this year, found that in 2023, about 70 percent of countries or 145 countries, imported more from China than they did from the US.
In the same year, China had become the largest trading partner for at least 60 countries, almost twice as many as for the US, which remained the largest trading partner for 33 economies.
The study also noted that Trump’s first trade war against China during his first term was a complete failure. It found that by 2023, 145 countries, 70 percent of the world’s economies, traded more with China, up from 139 nations in 2018.
When China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, more than 80 percent of countries had more two-way trade with the US than with China but this has fallen to just 30 percent by 2018 as most countries find it more profitable to do business with China.