President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on $500 billion of imports from China during a Friday interview with CNBC. China will likely turn the trade war into a currency war.
Despite repeated warnings from the business community about the harm of high tariffs on American consumers, President Donald Trump has no intention to slow down the trade war.
After imposing two rounds of tariffs on $234 billion worth of Chinese imports, the president said this morning that he is ready to slap new tariffs on everything from China, which would total $505 billion a year. “I’m ready to go to 500,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC.
“I’m not doing this for politics, I’m doing this to do the right thing for our country,” Trump said. “We have been ripped off by China for a long time.”
China fought back on Trump’s first round of tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese products with equivalent tariffs on American goods, but Beijing hasn’t responded to the follow-up tariff threat on $200 billion of imports (set to take effect in September) or the new announcement this morning.
In any case, China can’t afford to keep retaliating with equivalent tariffs, since it imports only $187 billion of goods from the U.
