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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Trump retaliates with tariff hike on Chinese goods
A trader rubs his eyes as he watches stock prices at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. Photo: AFP
COMPANY RETREAT? Trump on Twitter ‘ordered’ US firms to leave China, although he does not have the authority to impose such a ban, and lashed out at the Fed chairman
/ Bloomberg
US President Donald Trump on Friday announced a wave of higher tariffs on Chinese imports, even as he prepared to set off for a gathering of world leaders.
In an announcement on Twitter after major indices on Wall Street sank, Trump said that existing 25 percent tariffs on about US$250 billion in imports from China would rise to 30 percent on Oct. 1, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Planned 10 percent tariffs on a further US$300 billion in Chinese goods would be taxed at 15 percent instead of 10 percent, starting with the first tranche on Sept. 1.
The second batch of goods is to be hit on Dec. 15.
China firmly opposed the move and urged Washington to stop “wrongful deeds or bear the consequences,” the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.
“The US act is unilateral, bullying trade protectionism, and uses maximum pressure,” it said. “It severely disrupts the global trading system and normal international trade order, and the US will eat the bitter fruits of its action.”
In a series of tweets, Trump vowed to respond to Chinese retaliatory tariffs, accused US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell of being a bigger US “enemy” than Chinese President Xi Jinping （習近平） and called on US companies to abandon China.
Trump was responding to an announcement that Beijing was planning to impose retaliatory tariffs on US$75 billion of US imports, targeting politically sensitive products.
“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA,” Trump wrote.
The move came shortly before Trump departed for a G7 summit in France, at which the slowing global economy sits at the top of the agenda.
Friday’s tweets marked what analysts and people close to the administration said was a clear shift in tone by a president frustrated by a lack of progress in his trade assault on China and a slowing economy.
Michael Pillsbury, a China expert at the Hudson Institute who sometimes advises Trump, said that the president’s move reflected the fact that he had grown increasingly frustrated with China’s response to his escalating tariffs.
That has been driven in part by a change of attitude in Beijing, where officials seem increasingly dismissive of Trump and his chances of re-election, and convinced that hawkish aides are increasingly directing policy, Pillsbury said.
The president has little legal authority to ban all US companies from doing business with China, but he has the capacity to make life difficult for them, as he has with his tariffs, and could ban some tech companies from doing business with China, lawyers and analysts said.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
