China Vows Retaliation With “Same Scale, Intensity” To Any New US Tariffs
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Tue, 04/03/2018
Trump’s aggressive trade war overtures and China’s initial retaliatory moves have spooked Wall Street over the past week and again on Monday, which helped drive down the Dow Jones by 459 points, with the Nasdaq Composite quickly approaching correction territory. And as the mass exodus continues out of Wall Street’s highest-flying stocks, trade war concerns are sparking political, regulatory and market challenges that could soon derail the global growth narrative for months or even years to come.
According to Reuters, China is preparing aggressive counter-measures of the “same proportion, scale and intensity” if the Trump administration imposes further tariffs on Chinese goods, China’s Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai warned. And, as we discussed here previously, the worst-case scenario of a looming trade war could soon be realized, forcing the U.S. into a recession.
Tiankai made the provocative comments in an interview with China’s CGTN news channel on Tuesday, ahead of President Trump’s announcement of additional duties on “$50 billion to $60 billion in Chinese imports” following an examination under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act.
“If they do we will certainly take countermeasures of the same proportion and of the same scale, same intensity,” Cui Tiankai.
While China had previously signaled that it is prepared to escalate the trade war with Washington, Cui Tiankai was straight to the point in the interview: the latest tit-for-tat trade war measures between the West and the East are just the beginning.
On Monday China officially launched new tariffs on 128 U.S. imports in direct response to the Trump administration’s recent decision to increase taxes on imported steel and aluminum. The Chinese Ministry of Finance announced tariffs on $3 billion in imports of U.S. food and other goods.
But the big event will come later this week, when Washington is expected to reveal the next round of tariffs targeting Chinese imports, and with Cui’s warning, it is almost certainly a prelude to a much broader trade war that investors should strap in and hold on.
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