China on Tuesday responded to President Donald Trump’s United States tariffs imposition on its products, replicating by announcing its own tariffs on several American goods.
China also announced an investigation into Google for unfair business practices and other trade actions.
U.S. tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico also were to go into effect from Tuesday, although President Trump has agreed to a 30-day pause on his threats against Mexico and Canada as they acted to appease his concerns about border security and drug trafficking.
Trump planned to talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next few days to address these concerns.
This is not the first round of tit-for-tat actions between the two countries. China and the U.S. engaged in a trade war in 2018 when Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods, and China responded in kind.
Analysts said this time, China is much better prepared to counter.
“They have a much more developed export control regime. We depend on them for a lot of critical minerals: gallium, germanium, graphite, and a host of others. So, they could put some significant harm on our economy,” said a former State Department official and director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Philip Luck on Monday at a forum.
The measures announced Tuesday cut across different sectors of the economy, from energy to individual U.S. companies.
China said it would implement a 15% tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas products as well as a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery and large-engine cars imported from the U.S. The tariffs would take effect next Monday.
“The U.S.’s unilateral tariff increase seriously violates the rules of the World Trade Organisation,” the State Council Tariff Commission said in a statement.
“It is not only unhelpful in solving its own problems but also damages normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the U.S.”
China is the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas, with its top suppliers being Australia, Qatar and Malaysia.
The U.S., which is the biggest exporter of LNG globally, does not significantly export LNG to China.
In 2023, the U.S. exported 173,247 million cubic feet of LNG to China, representing about 2.3% of total natural gas export volumes, according to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In addition to the tariffs, China announced export controls on several elements critical to the production of modern high-tech products, they include tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum and indium, many of which are designated as critical minerals by the U.S. Geological Survey, meaning they are essential to U.S. economic or national security that have supply chains vulnerable to disruption.
The export controls are in addition to ones China placed in December on key elements such as gallium used in manufacturing.
In addition, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation said on Tuesday that it is investigating Google on suspicion of violating antitrust laws.
The announcement did not mention the tariffs but came just minutes after Trump’s 10% tariffs on China were to take effect.
It is unclear how the probe will affect Google’s operations.
Google has a limited presence in China, and its search engine is blocked in the country like most other Western platforms.
Google exited the Chinese market in 2010 after refusing to comply with censorship requests from the Chinese government and following a series of cyberattacks on the company.
Google did not immediately comment.
The Commerce Ministry also placed two American companies – PVH Group, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and Illumina, which is a biotechnology company with offices in China, on the unreliable entities list.
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