China threatens retaliation after Trump hits it with highest U.S. tariff on any country

HONG KONG — China said Thursday it would take all “necessary measures” to protect its legitimate interests after it was hit particularly hard by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners around the world.

Starting April 9, imports from the world’s second-biggest economy will be subject to an additional U.S. tariff of 34%, Trump said Wednesday at the White House, as he unveiled a long list of what he called reciprocal tariffs. That is on top of 20% in tariffs that he has imposed on China since taking office in January, bringing the total to 54% — the highest U.S. tariff on any country.

The president said the new tariffs — which he described as the biggest reorganization of the global economy since World War II — are aimed at reviving domestic manufacturing and rebalancing trade relations with a wide range of countries.

China said Thursday that it firmly opposed the tariffs and would take “necessary measures” to protect its interests.

“The U.S., under the guise of ‘reciprocity,’ has imposed tariffs on products from multiple countries, including China, which seriously violates WTO rules and undermines the rules-based multilateral trading system,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a briefing in Beijing.

Unlike with past tariffs when smartphones and other electronics were exempt, the latest levies appear to affect them, said Tianchen Xu, a senior China economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a financial forecasting service.

“No product made in China is safe,” Tianchen said.

The tariffs will be a “big blow” to China’s low-cost manufacturers, particularly at a time when Chinese President Xi Jinping is struggling to boost domestic demand, he added.

In addition to the tariffs, Trump has ordered the closing of the “de minimis” trade loophole that has fueled the explosive growth of Chinese retailers such as Temu and Shein.

Xu said the tariff increase could push China to negotiate, including on issues such as the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations by its Chinese owner to keep the short-video app from being banned, the deadline for which is Saturday.

China “has been very reluctant to engage with the U.S., but I think its calculus might be changing,” he added.

The 54% total is close to the 60% or more in tariffs that Trump threatened to impose on China during his 2024 presidential campaign, and by some calculations it is actually more than the 70% for some products when tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term are taken into account.

“At this level, many Chinese products are no longer price competitive,” said Xin Sun, a political economist and China specialist at King’s College London.

But Beijing is also much less dependent on the U.S. export market than it was when Trump first slapped it with tariffs in 2018, “meaning that the damage is more limited,” Sun said.

The damage is also likely to go both ways, said Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing. In many cases, American importers are entirely reliant on China for certain products, and they will now have to pay more to bring them to the U.S.

“These costs will be passed on to American consumers,” Wang said. “From this perspective, the ultimate result of Trump’s tariffs is to increase inflation in the United States.”

Because Trump also imposed steep tariffs on other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and India, China will still be a relatively cost-effective location for manufacturers, Sun said.

On the other hand, China could be doubly cut off from the U.S. market because of tariffs imposed on countries such as Vietnam, one of the places where Beijing has been shifting production in an effort to dodge U.S. tariffs, said Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist for Asia-Pacific at Natixis in Hong Kong.

The new tariff on Vietnam, home to the fourth-largest U.S. trade deficit after China, the European Union and Mexico, is one of the highest at 46%.

Experts say China is likely to respond much the same way it did when Trump imposed additional tariffs of 10% each in February and March, with targeted tariffs on some U.S. products, new export controls or investigations into U.S. companies.

“China will have no choice but to retaliate,” Sun said, adding that it would be “carefully calibrated so that it is more or less in line with the other countries’ responses.”

Beijing's strategy this time is neither to depreciate its currency nor to cut prices, said Andy Xie, a Shanghai-based independent economist.

He noted that the Ministry of Commerce has met with Walmart over media reports that the U.S. retailer is asking Chinese suppliers to slash prices to offset Trump’s tariffs. The suppliers are unlikely to comply, he said, meaning American consumers will either have to pay more or buy less.

“Basically, the U.S. needs to have a cut in living standard,” he said in a phone interview Thursday.

Beijing may also raise tariffs on U.S. products that can be readily sourced from other countries, Xie said, especially politically sensitive ones such as agricultural goods. The countermeasures China announced in February and March disproportionately affect areas where voters supported Trump.

“It’s not about the scale or the breadth,” Xie said. “It’s really about targeted tariffs that are meaningful.”

The tariffs had long been expected by Chinese officials as well as the public. In interviews in Beijing on Thursday, residents largely shrugged them off or expressed confidence that China would survive another trade war.

“I hope China comes out on top — and honestly, I believe we will,” said Susan Wu, 30, who works in education.

“China is really the only country that can stand toe-to-toe with the U.S. right now,” she said. “And in many ways, we’re not the same China we used to be — we’ve gotten way stronger.”

Jennifer Jett, Peter Guo and Mithil Aggarwal reported from Hong Kong, and Janis Mackey Frayer and Dawn Liu from Beijing.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com