Trump says tariffs working far better than anticipated
China won’t accept US trade ‘blackmail’ — state media
WASHINGTON, Aug 5, (Agencies): US President Donald Trump on Saturday defended his controversial use of tariffs against China and other countries, saying the trade measures are “working far better than anyone ever anticipated.”
“Tariffs have had a tremendous positive impact on our Steel Industry,” he said in one tweet. “Plants are opening all over the US, Steelworkers are working again, and big dollars are flowing into our Treasury.”
“Tariffs will make our country much richer than it is today,” Trump said in another tweet. “Only fools would disagree.” He also said China was “for the first time doing poorly against us.” His tweets came amid a new surge in trade tensions with China. Earlier this week, the US president told his top trade official to study whether to raise tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods from a planned 10 percent to 25 percent.
Beijing then threatened to impose an additional $60 billion in tariffs on a variety of American goods — which White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow dismissed as “a weak response.” On Saturday China’s foreign minister Wang Yi called his country’s threat “fully justified and necessary.”
Speaking on the sidelines of a security forum in Singapore, he hit back at Kudlow’s remarks: “As to whether China’s economy is doing well or not, I think it is all too clear to the whole international community,” Wang said, adding that China contributed a huge amount to global economic growth.
The growing friction with China has raised concerns in both countries — and reportedly even within the Trump administration — about collateral damage.
“We said before that this round of tariffs amounted to doubling down on the recklessness of imposing trade policy that will hurt US families and workers more than they will hurt China,” a major trade group, the National Retail Federation, said in a statement last week.
While Trump has taken credit for new steel jobs created with the help of tariffs, retaliatory measures by Beijing and others have rattled US soybean farmers and the many companies reliant on increasingly expensive steel as a raw material.
Restraint
China’s state media said on Saturday the government’s retaliatory tariffs on $60 billion of US goods showed rational restraint and they accused the United States of blackmail.
Late on Friday, China’s finance ministry unveiled new sets of additional tariffs on 5,207 goods imported from the United States, with the extra levies ranging from five to 25 percent on a total value of goods less than half of that proposed by US President Donald Trump’s administration.
The response follows the Trump administration’s proposal of a 25-percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports.
“China’s countermeasures are rational,” the Global Times, a tabloid run by the official People’s Daily, said in a commentary.
“China will not rush to compete with US numbers,” it said, echoing comments made by state television.
The United States and China implemented tariffs on $34 billion worth of each others’ goods in July. Washington is expected to soon implement tariffs on an additional $16 billion of Chinese goods, which China has already said it will match immediately.
“The White House’s extreme pressure and blackmail are already clear to the international community,” said a state television commentary. “Such methods of extreme blackmail will not bear fruit against China.”
China has now either imposed or proposed tariffs on $110 billion in US goods, representing the vast majority of China’s annual imports of American products. Last year, China imported about $130 billion in goods from the United States. Trump has ultimately threatened tariffs on over $500 billion in Chinese goods, covering virtually all US imports from China.