WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will keep pressing China for trade concessions, a top White House economic adviser said Friday, as the Asian nation continued the tariff escalation by announcing further retaliatory actions against U.S. goods.
“We’ve said many times: no tariffs, no tariff barriers, no subsidies. We want to see trade reforms. China is not delivering, OK?” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said in a Bloomberg Television interview Friday. “Their economy’s weak, their currency is weak, people are leaving the country. Don’t underestimate President Trump’s determination to follow through.”
China signaled Friday that it has no intention of retreating from a trade war. The government announced it has prepared a list of $60 billion worth of U.S. goods to hit with duties should the U.S. follow through on a plan to impose duties on an additional $200 billion of Chinese goods, as early as next month. The Chinese duties ranging from 5 percent to 25 percent will be levied on 5,207 kinds of American imports, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement on its website.
The retaliation stands to further inflame tensions between the world’s two biggest economies. It echoes China’s response to the previous round of tariffs last month, when the U.S. and China imposed tariffs on $34 billion worth of each others’ goods.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Friday that “instead of retaliating, China should address longstanding concerns about its unfair trading practices.”
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman had earlier called on Washington to “come to its senses” and settle the dispute.
Another $16 billion in U.S. levies on Chinese goods will likely follow in the coming days or weeks, against which Beijing has said it will retaliate.
In addition, Trump this week ordered officials to consider imposing a 25 percent tax on $200 billion worth of imported Chinese goods, up from an initial 10 percent rate. The move was intended to bring China back to the negotiating table for talks over U.S. demands for structural changes to the Chinese economy and a cut in the bilateral trade deficit. Friday’s retaliation from China suggests that tactic hasn’t worked.
The highest penalties on China’s new list would be imposed on honey, vegetables, mushrooms and industrial chemicals, targeting farming and mining areas that supported Trump in the 2016 election.
The new list includes products as varied as snow blowers and 3-D printers, suggesting Chinese authorities are struggling to find enough imports their own economy can do without. Beijing’s earlier round of tariffs appeared designed to minimize the effect on the Chinese economy by targeting soybeans, whiskey and other goods available from Brazil, Australia and other suppliers.
U.S. and Chinese officials have held “hardly any conversations” in the past month, but there’s “some hint” the Chinese may be warming to the idea of negotiations, Kudlow said. There’s recently been some communication at the highest levels, he told reporters outside the White House.
Three rounds of trade negotiations between senior U.S. and Chinese officials earlier this year centered on U.S. demands for China to make structural changes to its economy and to reduce its trade surplus with America. On Friday, U.S. data showed the merchandise trade gap with China widened slightly in June to $32.5 billion after May’s $32 billion deficit.
The U.S. tariffs, either in place or threatened, add up to almost half of the value of goods it imported from China last year.
China’s decision to threaten $60 billion of U.S. goods marks the first time this year that Beijing has not tried to match Washington’s tariffs dollar for dollar. China instead is threatening roughly two-fifths of its U.S. purchases after Trump threatened two-fifths of China’s much larger exports to the United States, said Tu Xinquan, executive dean of the China Institute for World Trade Organization Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.
“It’s more proportionate,” Tu said.
Chinese authorities — bracing for economic fallout — have taken a range of measures in recent weeks to bolster the economy. On Friday, officials stepped in to cushion the yuan, which has been battered by trade tensions and was approaching the key level of seven to the dollar.
Chinese officials have suggested in recent weeks that if the United States proceeds with tariffs on a very wide range of Chinese goods, Beijing may also retaliate against the Chinese-owned operations of big U.S. companies. From Apple to General Motors, a long list of large U.S. enterprises have transferred extensive operations to China and could be vulnerable to any response from Beijing.
The iPhones, Chevrolets and other products manufactured and sold in China by U.S. companies are mostly designed in the United States, and the Trump administration has declared various Chinese industries to be threatening U.S. national security, illegally copying foreign intellectual property or causing widespread job losses in the United States. China has denied violating international trade norms.
China is trying to seek an “equal” position in future talks with the U.S. with Friday’s retaliation announcement, said Gai Xinzhe, analyst at the Bank of China’s Institute of International Finance in Beijing. “Any talks in the future, should they happen, should be conducted on an equal and faithful basis,” the analyst said.
Beijing’s plans for tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods includes an additional 5 percent in duty on about 600 kinds of U.S. products including planes and computers; another 10 percent on almost 1,000 products including wigs and textiles; an extra 20 percent on more than 1,000 items including some chemicals, cookers and paper; and an additional 25 percent on over 2,400 products such as meat, wheat, wine and liquefied natural gas.
“China’s differential tax rate countermeasures are rational and restrained,” the Ministry of Commerce said in a separate statement on its website. “The implementation date will be subject to the actions of the U.S., and China reserves the right to continue introducing other countermeasures.”
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Mayeda, Reade Pickert, Justin Sink, Xiaoqing Pi,Yinan Zhao, Kevin Hamlin, Miao Han and Jonathan Ferro of Bloomberg News; and by Joe McDonald, Keith Bradsher and Cao Li of The Associated Press.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman had earlier called on Washington to “come to its senses” and settle the dispute.