China vows retaliation after Trump’s latest tariff threat

BEIJING — China said on Tuesday it will not back down in the face of President Trump’s fresh threat to impose an additional 50% tariff on Chinese imports, as the trade war between the world’s top two economies looked set to worsen.

Trump said on Truth Social he would impose the new tariffs on China if Beijing did not retract a 34% retaliatory tariff on U.S. goods that it announced in response to Trump’s initial salvo last Wednesday.

In a strongly worded statement, China’s commerce ministry said the country “will resolutely take countermeasures to safeguard its rights and interests.”

“The U.S. tariff escalation threat against China compounds its mistake and further exposes its nature of blackmail, which China will never accept,” the statement said, adding that “China will fight till the end if the U.S. side is bent on going down the wrong path.”

Global equity markets have been pummeled as recession fears have grown following Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of tariffs that affect most countries across the world and most U.S. imports.

On Tuesday, however, Asian stocks took a breather and gained ground in early trading, after heavy losses on Monday. Key indexes in China, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea were up.

If Trump follows through, the U.S. will have hit Chinese imports this year with fresh combined tariffs of 104%. Trump hit Beijing with 20% in tariffs in the first weeks of his presidency, and then an additional 34% tariff on Wednesday.

According to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. imported $438.9 billion in goods from China last year, up 2.8% from 2023.

Gabriel Wildau, a managing director at consultancy agency Teneo, said he expects Beijing to “hunker down for a protracted economic war of attrition.”

“This strategy of patient resistance is based on a conviction that seven years of efforts to reduce reliance on the U.S. has rendered China economically resilient to the trade war now underway,” Wildau wrote in a note. “China’s leaders believe that over the long term, Trump is ill-equipped to withstand the political pressure that his tariff policies will generate.”

This story has been updated to reflect official translations.

Aowen Cao contributed to this report.