Trade war between US and China escalates
In an escalation to the ongoing trade war between the United States and China, the administration of American President Donald Trump introduced new 10 per cent tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods, which kicked in on Monday. The development has resulted into spanning of thousands of products, including food seasonings, baseball gloves, network routers and industrial machinery parts.
In retaliation, China had imposed new taxes of 5 to 10 per cent on $60 billion of US goods such as meat, chemicals, clothes and auto parts.
The latest tariffs imposed by the Trump administration applies to over $250 billion of Chinese goods, roughly half the amount the country sells to the US.
Thousands of products bought by US consumers, including hundreds of millions of dollars of furniture and electronics imports have been affected by the latest round of tariffs.
The US tariffs imposed earlier in the year mostly hit industrial goods.
The measures are meant to punish China for what the Trump administration says are unfair trade practices, such as intellectual property theft.
Beijing had accused Washington of protectionism and bullying and has rejected the US assertions.
It has also fired back with tariffs on American goods worth more than $110 billion.
Monday's tariffs are set to increase at the end of the year from 10 to 25 per cent.
The US president has also threatened tariffs on another $267 billion of Chinese products, which has halted the new round of negotiations between the two sides.
