Trump’s new trade war with China is coming

With Donald Trump’s decisive victory in Tuesday’s presidential elections, the trade war between the US and China will further escalate.

The ongoing trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies began in 2018 when Trump launched a series of tariffs targeting hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods, citing what he called unfair trade policies and theft of intellectual property.

Trumpwho previously called himself the ‘Tariff Man’ and described tariffs as ‘the most beautiful word in the dictionary’, has threatened 10 percent import duties on all imports or higher and as much as 60 percent on specific Chinese goods.

These additional measures could be implemented under Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974, which allows the US to investigate and respond to foreign trade practices deemed unfair or harmful to US interests.

When asked how Beijing might respond to Trump’s possible blanket tariffs, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning told reporters on Wednesday that she would “not answer hypothetical questions” but added: “There is no winner in a trade war, and the world won’t benefit either. It.”

Bonnie Glaser, director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said earlier Newsweek that while she expects the president-elect to deliver on his campaign promise, “it remains to be seen whether they will be part of a broader, coherent strategy aimed at winning the strategic competition with China.”

Wu .

“Whether tariffs on Chinese goods will reach 60 percent will depend on the specific types of goods the US imports from China, and the taxes the US can apply will ultimately not be that high,” he said.

Trump has promoted the tariffs as a means to lower taxes and pay down the national debt.

However, a recent analysis by the Washington DC-based Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center predicted that while Trump’s tariffs could generate an estimated $3.7 trillion in gross tariff revenue, the actual increase in federal revenues over the next few years would be closer to would be $2.8 trillion. ten years, as the rates would likely reduce other tax revenues.

Furthermore, “Trump’s tariffs would significantly increase the prices of imported goods because they would largely be passed on to consumers. That would shrink both inflation-adjusted domestic incomes and income tax revenues,” the study found.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration opted to maintain Trump-era tariffs on about $300 billion of Chinese products, in what the Chinese embassy denounced as “unilateralism and protectionism.”

Tariffs on Chinese-made solar cells, semiconductors and medical supplies – such as masks and surgical gloves – were increased from the original rate of 25 percent to 50 percent.

Duties on lithium-ion batteries rose from 7.5 percent to 25 percent, and duties on Chinese electric vehicles, a sector in which China has a dominant position but little market share in the U.S., were quadrupled from 25 percent to 100 percent.

Newsweek has contacted the Chinese Embassy in the US for further comment.