www.zerohedge.com One day after the Chinese press roundly mocked Trump’s unsolicited tariff delay as proof the US was losing the trade war with China, with the Global Times saying that “Chinese experts said the sudden postponing of impending tariffs showed that the maximum pressure tactics of the US are losing their bite when it comes to China”, a suddenly emboldened Beijing – perhaps sensing that it is indeed dealing with a weaker opponent – called planned U.S. tariffs on an additional $300 billion in Chinese goods a violation of accords reached by Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, and warned it would take all necessary measures to impose new tariffs on its own.
Echoing what Global Times editor in chief Hu Xijin said overnight, a short Thursday statement from the State Council Tariff Committee said the new 10% tariffs have taken the U.S. and China off the track of resolving their dispute through negotiation, and noted that China “has no choice but to take necessary measures to retaliate,” without specifying what the nation would do. The committee has overseen tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs on American products.
The statement indicates that it won’t take long for China to reveal its own retaliatory tariffs, according to Tu Xinquan, dean of the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. The response is about expressing China’s stance even though policy makers know the impact on the U.S. economy will be limited, he told Bloomberg.