American customs duties: China promises to take “all the necessary countermeasures”

As of next week Tuesday after Donald Trump’s announcement, the United States will impose additional customs duties of 10 % on imports. An announcement that is reminiscent of the scent of the trade war between the two world’s largest economies that had been launched in 2018 by Donald Trump in his first mandate.

This time, the American president, to justify these additional customs duties of 10 % on imports, accuses China of laissez-faire in fentanyl traffic, a synthetic opioid that is wreaking havoc on American territory.

China has weapons to reply

However, China should not remain motionless in the face of these new customs duties. “If the United States persists in going on this path, China will take all the countermeasures necessary to defend its legitimate rights and interests,” said the spokesman.

The press release also believes that new customs duties will “increase the burden on American companies and consumers and compromise the stability of the world industrial chain”.

During the first announcement of customs duties on Chinese imports in early February, Beijing had already replied by increasing customs duties on imports of American coal and natural gas and on American vehicle imports. Google had also been put in the viewfinder of the Chinese authorities with an anti-monopoly investigation. In addition, Beijing had confirmed that it had filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO).

However, for observers, this first train of sanctions in Beijing had been deemed relatively “sober” with targeted measures on non -priority markets. Hydrocarbons and coal sales from the United States to China have totaled the equivalent of $ 7 billion last year, according to Chinese customs data. If this market is important for American exporters, it is much less so for China whose energy imports from Russia exceeded $ 90 billion last year.

However, China has started to activate a lever that could be more penalizing for the United States with additional tungsten exports of tungsten exports and “25 products and technologies based on rare metals such as ammonium paratungstate, tellurium, bismuth …”, rare earths. And there, the United States, if China closes taps, could be deprived of a set of strategic metals highly sought after by the tech industry but also of defense.