The world is bracing for U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs to go into effect on Wednesday. Nearly all of the United States’ trading partners will be affected, from uninhabited islands to Washington’s biggest adversaries, and global stock markets are preparing for the potentially catastrophic effects the duties are expected to inflict on global supply chains.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said perhaps as many as 70 countries have requested negotiations with Trump to discuss reducing or eliminating the tariffs—with varying degrees of success. However, China stands out as the only major economy to counter Trump with its own retaliatory duties so far.
Last Friday, Beijing announced that it would match the 34 percent tariff rate that Trump imposed on China and hit the United States with a slew of other countermeasures. That defiance angered Trump. On Truth Social on Monday, he wrote that the United States would impose additional 50 percent tariffs on Beijing if it failed to repeal its 34 percent countertariffs by Tuesday.
The Chinese Commerce Ministry fired back, saying that “the U.S. threat to escalate tariffs is doubly erroneous” and that China would once again “take firm countermeasures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests” in response. As of noon on Tuesday, with China not backing down, the White House announced that the new 50 percent tariff would go into effect on Wednesday.
That will bring the average tariff on Chinese imports to an astronomical 126 percent, with Trump himself having added 104 percent over four rounds of tariffs in just the past three months on top of tariffs that predated his second term.
Read more in today’s World Brief: China Remains Defiant in Face of New Trump Tariffs.
This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump administration. Follow along here.
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