Trump imposes tariffs on another 200bn dollars of Chinese goods

The move escalates a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies and raises prices on consumer goods ranging from handbags to bicycle tyres.

The tariffs will start at 10% and rise to 25% starting on January 1.

President Donald Trump made the announcement ON Monday evening in a move that is sure to ratchet up hostilities between Washington and Beijing.

Mr Trump has already imposed 25%tariffs on 50 billion dollars (£38 billion) in Chinese goods.

China has retaliated in kind, hitting American soybeans, among other goods, in a shot at the president’s supporters in the US farm belt.

Beijing has warned that it would hit an additional 60 billion dollars (£45 billion) in American products if Mr Trump ordered more tariffs.

Mr Trump on Monday threatened to raise the stakes again if Beijing should retaliate, adding a further 267 billion dollars in Chinese imports to the target list. That would raise the total to 517 billion dollars (£393 billion) — covering nearly everything China sells the United States.

After taking in public comments, the administration said on Monday that it had withdrawn several items from an earlier list of 200 billion dollars in Chinese imports, including child-safety products such as bicycle helmets.

In a victory for Apple Inc and its American customers, the administration removed smart watches and some other consumer electronics products from the list of goods imported from China.

At the same time, the administration said it is still open to negotiations with China.

“China has had many opportunities to fully address our concerns,” Mr Trump said in a statement.

“Once again, I urge China’s leaders to take swift action to end their country’s unfair trade practices.”

The two countries are fighting over Beijing’s ambitions to supplant American technological supremacy.

The Office of the US Trade Representative charged in a March report that China is using predatory tactics to obtain foreign technology, including hacking US companies to steal their trade secrets and forcing them to turn over their know-how in exchange for access to the Chinese market.

Mr Trump has also complained about America’s massive trade deficit — 336 billion dollars last year — with China, its biggest trading partner.

In May, in fact, it looked briefly as if Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese vice premier Liu He had brokered a truce built around Chinese promises to buy enough American farm products and liquefied natural gas to put a dent in the trade deficit.

But Mr Trump quickly backed away from the truce.

In the first two rounds of tariffs, the Trump administration was careful to try to spare consumers from the direct impact of the import taxes.

The levies focused on industrial products, not on things Americans buy at shopping centres or via Amazon.

By expanding the list to 200 billion dollars-worth of Chinese imports, Mr Trump risks spreading the pain to ordinary Americans.

The administration is targeting a bewildering variety of products — from sockeye salmon to bamboo mats — forcing US companies to scramble for suppliers outside China, absorb the import taxes or pass along the burden to their customers.

In a filing with the government, for instance, Giant Bicycles Inc of Newbury Park, California, noting that 94% of imported bicycles came from China last year, complained that “there is no way our business can shift its supply chain to a new market” to avoid the tariffs and warned “a tariff increase of this magnitude will inevitably be paid for by the American consumer”.

Mr Trump has reversed decades of US policy in favour of ever-freer trade. He campaigned on a promise to tax imports and rewrite or tear up trade agreements that he said put US companies and workers at a disadvantage.

“The president’s negotiating tactics do not work well with China’s way of thinking,” said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at SS Economics in Los Angeles.

“I think things will get worse. I fully expect the tariff rate will go up to 25%.”