China announces 25% duty on U.S. pork

China raised import duties on USA pork, fruit and other products Monday in an escalating tariff dispute with President Donald Trump that companies worry might depress global commerce. Beijing has placed a 15 percent tariff on 120 products like fruits, nuts, and wine and a 25 percent on eight additional products, such as pork and recycled aluminum. In 2017, USA exported 495,637 metric tons (mt) of pork and pork variety meat to China/Hong Kong, valued at $1.08 billion – our second-largest global market by volume and third-largest by value. “They need a growing export market and anything that disrupts that is not good”.

U.S. President Donald Trump himself, however, is threatening to terminate the North American free-trade agreement if Mexico does not do more to stop the flow of people and drugs across its border to the United States.

“We hope that the United States can withdraw measures that violate WTO rules as soon as possible to put trade in the relevant products between China and the USA back on a normal track”, the Commerce Ministry statement said.

“We’re in a trade slap-fight right now”, not a trade war, said Derek Scissors, resident scholar and China specialist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Stocks have been trending lower for weeks largely because of a series of tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump and the Facebook data privacy scandal, which has raised the prospect of tighter regulation for social media and other tech stocks.

The Chinese government said the tariffs would effectively serve as retaliation for restrictions Trump announced last month.

In a statement published on Monday morning, the Chinese commerce ministry said the United States had “seriously violated” the principles of non-discrimination enshrined in World Trade Organization rules, and had also damaged China’s interests. His administration accused Beijing of making “state-led, market-distorting efforts to force, pressure, and steal USA technologies and intellectual property”.

In any case, China’s trade openness and its reliance on trade for GDP growth both peaked over decade ago, and China’s growth story is increasingly a domestic one, the ratings agency said. Former Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei has suggested that Beijing may target soybeans.

China is a relatively insignificant supplier of steel and aluminum to the United States. In addition, the USA may sanction technology sectors, that China relies on, to draw the future of industry and exports.

“We benefit enormously from being able to trade internationally”.

The government of President Xi Jinping said it was responding to a US tariff hike on steel and aluminum.

In March, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on foreign-made steel and 10% for aluminium in response to a national security investigation he initiated last spring, but then waived those levies on certain countries but not China. The current Chinese book of trade laws make it legal for businesses and individuals in the country to ask for intellectual property – think patents, trademarks, and means of producing products, etc. – just to kick off business relationships between them and foreigners.

In a “field guide” on a potential China-US trade war, S&P Global Ratings said any retaliation by major USA trading partners will derail a synchronised global economic recovery.