US Trade Rep Lays Out Amount Of Tariffs, Which Chinese Industries Are Targeted

Thursday, March 22, 2018
By Paul Martin

by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 03/22/2018

First the good news: as we reported moments ago, the “trade war – heavy” scenario envisioned by Deutsche Bank comes with 45% tariffs on all imports from China which would cause significant damage to China’s economy, and would prompt China to respond with drastic measures. This scenario could also “move the US economy into recession.” But according to a just released fact sheet from the US Trade Representative, this is not the baseline US proposal, at least not yet, and instead the US will impose “only” 25% duties on Chinese products.

Now the bad news: the same fact sheet notes that the industries targeted by the US will be: aerospace, information and communication technology and machinery, all high-tech (one can argue with technology stolen from the US), high-margin, mission-critical industries to China where the US is a critical customer. In fact, the strategic importance of maintaining legacy trade status for these sectors prompted Goldman Sachs one seek ago to not even include them in the list of most likely industries targeted by the US.

As such, it is likely that the starting salvo in trade wars will anger Beijing far more than if some of the more generic export sectors had been targeted. It also means that the severity of the proportional response will be high enough to potentially prompt the next step in the White House counter-retaliation in what is now an escalating tit-for-tat trade war as taught in all PoliSci 101 classes.

The Rest…HERE

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