American and Chinese flags and a “125% tariff” label are seen in these illustration tasks on April 10, 2025.
Given ruvic | Reuters
China retaliates on Friday against the specific tariffs of the country of the US President Donald Trump by raising their taxes on US assets to 125% from 84%, said China’s Ministry of Finance.
“Even if the United States continues to impose higher rates, it will no longer make economic sense and will become a joke in the history of the world economy,” the ministry said in a statement, according to a translation of CNBC.
“With tariff rates at the current level, there is no market for American goods imported to China,” the statement said, adding that “if the United States government continues to increase tariffs in China, Beijing will ignore.”
The Trump administration confirmed to CNBC on Thursday that the US tariff rate. In Chinese imports now effectively totals 145%. Trump’s last executive order promoted beijing tariffs at 125%, stacked in addition to a 20% combined rate related to the fentanyl imposed in February and March.
“This is the end of the escalation in terms of bilateral tariff rates. Both China and the US. UU. They have sent clear messages, it makes no sense to raise the tariffs even more,” said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist in the management of precise assets.
The next step would be to evaluate the damage to economic activities in the United States and China, said Zhang, and added that it is not a sign that the two governments would begin negotiations and avoid interruption in global supply chains.
Unlike the previous rounds of reprisal measures, Beijing has refrained from announcing new export control measures or launching its list of entities unreliable with the addition of more US companies, which are enrolled.
Despite the last climbing, a spokesman for the China Ministry of Commerce reiterated in a separate statement on Friday that Beijing is open to negotiating with the US.
The hopes of an agreement between the United States and China to resolve commercial tensions have faded rapidly, since Beijing has been hitting the last week with the Tit-For-Tat tasks on US goods and large-range restrictions on US businesses.
“It is unfortunate that Real China does not want to come and negotiate, because they are sausage criminals in the international commercial system,” said the United States Treasury Secretary Scott Besent, Fox Business on Wednesday after elevated rates from China to 84%.
“They have the most unbalanced economy in the history of the modern world, and I can tell him that this climb is a loser for them,” Besent said.
Goldman Sachs in Thorsday reduced his 4% China GDP prognosis given the drag of US commercial tensions and the slowest global growth.
While Chinese exports to the US. UU. Only represent approximately 3 percentage points of China’s total gross domestic product, there is still a significant impact on employment, said Goldman Sachs analysts. They estimate that around 10 million to 20 million workers in China are involved with export businesses to the United States.
On Friday, China reiterated that it will continue to “counterattack and fight until the end” if the United States continues to violate China’s interests.
In a meeting with the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, said that “there is no winner in a tariff war and go against the world will only be isolated,” according to a government reading translated into CNBC. The two leaders promised to deepen ties in areas that include trade, investment and technological innovation.
The White House did not immediately respond to the request for CNBC comments.
– Lim Hui Jie and Evelyn Cheng from CNBC contributed to this report.