...threatens to escalate it (again)

washington — US President Donald Trump said he was ready to impose tariffs on an additional $500 billion of imports from China, threatening to escalate the current trade clash with the Asian nation and sending financial markets downward.

“We’re down a tremendous amount,” Trump said in an interview on CNBC, recorded on Thursday and broadcast on Friday. “I’m ready to go to 500.”

Both Dow and S&P stock index futures, already down on trade worries, fell further after the interview.

Earlier this month, the United States imposed tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports. In return, China levied taxes on the same value of US products.

The US disputed the retaliatory tariffs at the World Trade Organisation on Monday, along with those imposed by the European Union, Canada, Mexico and Turkey in response to new US duties on steel and aluminium. When asked about the stock market possibly falling if the US imposes duties on such a large amount of goods, Trump said: “If it does, it does. Look, I’m not doing this for politics.”

The growing share of international trade under threat has raised the prospect the escalating trade war could harm the global economy by disrupting companies’ supply chains, pushing firms to hold off on investments and making goods more expensive for consumers. —