As Trump’s new tariffs take effect, China retaliates with a raft of measures

BEIJING — China is not taking the Trump administration’s tariffs sitting down.

On Tuesday, shortly after the 10% tariffs took effect just past midnight on the U.S. East Coast, Beijing announced a raft of countermeasures.

Those include 15% tariffs on American coal and liquefied natural gas and 10% tariffs on crude oil, farm equipment and certain other vehicles. The Chinese counter-tariffs are slated to take effect on Feb. 10.

In a statement, the Chinese finance ministry said the U.S. tariffs “severely violate World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, and not only fail to address [America’s] own problems but also disrupt normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the United States.”

In addition, China’s market regulator announced an anti-monopoly investigation into Google. And the commerce ministry and customs administration jointly announced fresh export controls on a handful of rare metals, including tungsten, indium and molybdenum. Announcements about the Google investigation and export controls did not explicitly mention the U.S. tariffs.

China’s commerce ministry also put two U.S. firms – PVH Group and Illumina, Inc. – on its “unreliable entity” list, saying they violated market principles and adopted discriminatory measures against Chinese companies. PVH is the parent company of brands including Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.

Those announcements did not explicitly mention the U.S. tariffs.

Trump signed orders for the tariffs against China, Canada and Mexico on the weekend in a bid to pressure those three countries to do more to stop the flow of migrants and illegal drugs, including fentanyl, into the United States.

The tariffs on Mexico and Canada have been put on hold for at least a month after last minute negotiations led to both countries agreeing to boost border security.

China is a major source of the precursor chemicals to make fentanyl, and Beijing says it has gone out of its way to help curb the flow of the synthetic opioid into America. After Trump announced his latest tariffs, China warned that they would damage prospects for future cooperation and vowed to launch a case against them in the WTO.

Trump has warned that he could increase the tariffs on China further.

Earlier, Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, said Trump was due to talk to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the next 24 hours.