Trump imposes $200B in tariffs on Chinese goods

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday announced new tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports, a sharp escalation of its trade fight with China that will also exact costs on a wide range of American businesses and consumers.

The new tariffs, to take effect next Monday, would initially be set at 10 percent but climb to 25 percent in the new year. With President Donald Trump already having slapped 25 percent tariffs on about $50 billion of Chinese goods, the United States by next week will have imposed significant taxes on about half of all Chinese merchandise entering American borders.

“It will be a lot of money coming into the coffers of the United States of America,” he told reporters Monday afternoon.

Trump has said he is mulling even more tariffs on China. Beijing has previously said that it would respond with retaliatory tariffs on an additional $60 billion of U.S. imports.

Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin last week sent overtures to Beijing for renewed high-level trade talks possibly later this month, but Trump’s announcement Monday could scuttle the proposed meetings. As with the previous round, Trump issued the new duties based on the administration’s findings that China has long engaged in predatory economic behavior, including forcing U.S. firms to hand over technologies to have access to the large Chinese market.

“It looks like both sides are digging in for protracted tensions,” said David Loevinger, a managing director at TCW Emerging Markets Group in Los Angeles and formerly a senior Treasury Department official for China affairs.

The earlier round of tariffs, in two portions, affected mostly Chinese machinery and industrial parts, intermediary materials and components largely invisible to consumers. But the new duties will ensnare roughly 5,000 products, including many ordinary household goods.

Other products subject to tariffs include such varied items as vacuum cleaners, baseball gloves and frozen fish.