China and the US have stepped up their increasingly heated trade conflict by respectively announcing extensive new tariffs on each other's exports.
Making good on previous proposals, the US has published a proposed list of products imported from China that could be subject to additional tariffs, covering approximately 1,300 separate tariff lines worth around $50 billion (€40.78 billion).
Products set to be affected by the 25 per cent levies include industrial robotics, electronics, metal alloys, aircraft parts, vaccines, dishwashing machines, aircraft tyres, nuclear reactors, TV cameras and cassette players.
China responded swiftly to this move by confirming its own matching tariffs, which will also cover $50 billion of US imports. These duties of 25 per cent will affect 106 American products from 14 categories, including beef, cars, planes, whiskey and soybeans, the latter of which represents one of the leading goods shipped to China.
Following this announcement, China's deputy finance minister Zhu Guangyao reiterated that the country would prefer to avoid a full-blown trade war with the US, describing this as a "lose-lose" scenario and calling for a constructive, cooperative approach to resolving the matter.
However, the US government has taken a much more bellicose approach, with a US Trade Representative statement saying its tariffs represent "part of the US response to China's unfair trade practices related to the forced transfer of US technology and intellectual property".
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump took to Twitter to vigorously defend his latest controversial decision, saying: "We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the US. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!"
However, the president's top economic adviser Larry Kudlow conceded that further negotiations between the two countries are still likely to take place, meaning the tariffs are not guaranteed to go into effect.
