The rate of 10 percent of President Trump on all Chinese products came into effect on Tuesday at 12:01 pm, the result of an executive order issued during the weekend aimed at putting Beijing to fentanyl shipments in the United States.
The Chinese government has quickly announced a series of retaliation steps, including additional rates for coal, natural gas, farm machines and other products from the United States. It also said that it had implemented limitations for the export of certain critical minerals, many of which are used in the production of high-tech products.
Moreover, Chinese market controllers said they had started an antimonopoly investigation into Google. Google is blocked from the Chinese internet, but the relocation can disrupt the company with Chinese companies.
The American rates, Mr. Trump, on Monday, said they were an 'opening salvo', were on top of taxes that the president imposed during his first term. Many Chinese products were already confronted with a rate of 10 or 25 percent and the relocation adds a rate of 10 percent to more than $ 400 billion in goods that Americans buy every year at China.
Mr. Trump was planning to hit the three largest trading partners in America, Canada, Mexico and China, with rates to varying degrees. But after days of hectic negotiations, Mr Trump agreed to pause rates on Mexico and Canada for 30 days after the Canadian and Mexican governments promised to perform their supervision of Fentanyl and the border.
On Monday, Mr Trump said that he was planning to speak with Chinese leader Xi Jinping within the next 24 hours, but it was not clear when the telephone conversation would take place. An official of the White House confirmed on Monday afternoon that the rates with China would still take effect at midnight.
The executive command of Mr Trump, signed on Saturday, also ended a popular solution that many Chinese companies have used to send goods to the United States without paying the rates the president imposed in 2018. The provision, known as the minimis, allowed popular E -commerce companies such as Shein and Temu to send billions of dollars of products from Chinese factories directly to the rate of American consumers.
The deal that Mr Trump made with Canada and Mexico brought the United States back from the edge of a potentially devastating trade war with two of the close allies on Monday. But it didn't promise the threat of similar conflicts later.
On Monday, Mr. Trump made it clear that he would use rates generously to allow other governments to give him what he wants.
“I don't want to use names, but rates are very powerful, both economically and in getting everything you want,” said Mr Trump during comments in the Oval Office. “If you are the pot with gold, the rates are very good, they are very powerful and they will make our country very rich again.”
Mr. Trump has accused China that he did not do enough to stop the export of Fentanyl and the chemicals used to make it. In an executive order that was issued on Saturday, Mr Trump said that shipments of synthetic opioids had destroyed American communities, had put a serious pressure on the American health care system and the most important cause of death for people aged 18 to 45 in the United States.
China criticized Mr Trump's executive command this weekend, but did not immediately promise to take revenge on his own trade measures. Instead, it said that it considered “countermeasures” and would submit a case against the United States to the World Trade Organization.
It is not clear what extra steps the Chinese government has recently, possibly, taken, outside its earlier cooperation between law enforcement with the United States on the Fentanyl trade. Mr. Trump discussed Fentanyl with Mr. XI in a phone call during his first week at the office.
During Mr. Trump's first term, China introduced a ban on Fentanyl and started coordinating efforts with the United States to catch human traffickers under pressure from Mr Trump. And in 2023 Mr. XI and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. In with a series of bilateral conversations about narcotic drugs after they met in Woodside, Calif.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy had said that China firmly opposed rates and that any differences or frictions should be resolved by dialogue. “There is no winner in a trade war or rate war, which serves the interests of neither she or the world,” said the spokesperson.
During his first term, Mr. Trump waged an intense trade war with China, after initiating a business that discovered that the country had unfairly violated the American intellectual property. He increased rates for China and ultimately applied rates to around 60 percent of the country's export to the United States. In January 2020 he signed a trade agreement with Chinese leaders, but the rates remained in place. Mr Biden held those taxes in place and added additional rates for electric vehicles, solar cells, semiconductors and advanced batteries.
