Trump says US to put additional 100% tariff on China
President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the United States will impose a 100% tariff on China, effective Nov. 1, in addition to the 30% tariff already being levied. In addition, the United States will impose export controls “on any and all critical software,” Trump added.
Stocks plummeted following this announcement, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping by 1.9%; the S&P going down by 2.71% and the Nasdaq falling by 3.56%.
This comes after China put export controls on rare earth minerals. Foreign companies under new regulations from Beijing are required to get special approval to export items with the elements.
“Some very strange things are happening in China! They are becoming very hostile,” Trump said on Truth Social Friday.
In the Truth Social post, Trump indicated he will cancel a meeting he had planned with Chinese President Xi Jinping, originally set for two weeks in South Korea, stating that “now there seems to be no reason” for it. The Associated Press reported that Trump’s Asia trip, slated for the end of the month, is set to include stops in Malaysia and Japan, along with South Korea.
“It is impossible to believe that China would have taken such an action, but they have, and the rest is History,” Trump said in a later post.
China and US trade war
China and the United States have been engaged in trade disputes since the beginning of the year. One of the sticking points are the rare earth minerals the United States needs to make a variety of technologies.
Markets were also volatile in the spring after Trump put tariffs of 145% on goods from China, and the country imposed 125% tariffs on American items. Through negotiations, these were decreased to 30% by the U.S. and 10% by China.
Whether this announcement sticks remains to be seen. Trump has previously threatened and then suspended tariffs, prompting a Financial Times columnist to coin the term “TACO,” or “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
Still, Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the AP that Trump’s post could “mark the beginning of the end of the tariff truce” the two countries had.
“…Mutually assured disruption between the two sides is no longer a metaphor,” Singleton said. “Both sides are reaching for their economic weapons at the same time, and neither seems willing to back down.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
