"Blackmail": How China Plans To Fight Trump's 50% Tariff Threat

"It's blackmail." This is how China decried US President Donald Trump's latest threat to add a further tariff of 50 per cent on its goods as it vowed to fight levies "to the end". The American leader has given Beijing 24 hours to take back the tit-for-tat 34 per cent tariff it announced on the United States last week. 

If neither side blinks and Trump sticks to his plans, total new levies could climb to 104 per cent this year on Chinese goods imported into the United States, escalating a trade war that has already spurred the biggest market losses since the pandemic.

"The US threat to escalate tariffs against China is a mistake on top of a mistake, which once again exposes the US's blackmailing nature," China's commerce ministry said in a statement. on Tuesday. 

"If the US insists on having its way, China will fight to the end."

The ministry reiterated that it sought "dialogue" with the United States, and that there were "no winners in a trade war".

China's Strategy 

Beijing's defiance stems from the Chinese government's decision to position itself as an oppositional force against what it calls "unilateral bullying" from the US. Over the weekend, Beijing sent a clear message to the world that it's well prepared to weather a trade war.

"US tariffs will have an impact (on China), but 'the sky won't fall,'" the ruling Chinese Communist Party said in a commentary in its mouthpiece, People's Daily, said Sunday.

"Since the US initiated the (first) trade war in 2017 - no matter how the US fights or presses - we have continued to develop and progress, demonstrating resilience - 'the more pressure we get, the stronger we become,'" it read further.

US-China Trade War

Trump on Tuesday said he would impose the additional 50 per cent duty on US imports from China on Wednesday if Beijing did not withdraw the 34 per cent tariffs it had imposed on US products last week.

Those Chinese tariffs, in turn, had come in response to 34 per cent "reciprocal" duties announced by Trump. The average US tariff on Chinese goods is already set to climb to 76 per cent following Trump's levies last week.

Trump's tariffs have already had a dramatic impact on markets in the last days, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng collapsing by 13.2 percent on Monday -- its worst day since the Asian financial crisis -- before paring back some of those losses in opening trade on Tuesday. 

The moves have led economists to question whether the White House stands to gain much from hiking rates further.

"Since China already faces a tariff rate in excess of 60 per cent, it doesn't matter if it goes up by 50 per cent or 500 per cent," Xu Tianchen, senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told Reuters.

"What China can do is stop US farming purchases, match US  tariffs and expand its export controls across the periodic table of chemical elements," he added.