WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday he will impose new tariffs on about $200 billion in Chinese goods and threatened to add hundreds of billions more as part of his campaign to pressure Beijing to change its commercial practices, escalating trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
The 10% tax on Chinese imports will take effect on Sept. 24 and will rise to 25% at the end of the year, according to administration officials. The tariffs will affect thousands of goods ranging from luggage to seafood, extending the impact of Trump’s aggressive tariff policy for the first time to a broad population of American consumers.
Chinese trade practices “plainly constitute a grave threat to the long-term health and prosperity of the United States economy,” Trump said in a statement.
China’s Commerce Ministry on Tuesday vowed unspecified countermeasures, saying in a brief statement on its website that China “has no choice but to undertake synchronous retaliation” to defend its interests and the global free-trade order. The U.S. tariff plan has created “new uncertainty” for negotiations between the two countries, said the statement, which was attributed to an unnamed spokesman.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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