China Hits Back Hard in Global Trade War With Tariffs on US Goods

writing by Matthias Williams Reuters April 4, 2025

PALM BEACH, Florida/BEIJING/WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) – China announced additional tariffs of 34% on U.S. goods on Friday, the most serious escalation in a trade war with President Donald Trump that has fed fears of a recession and triggered a global stock market rout.

In the standoff between the world’s top two economies, Beijing also announced controls on exports of some rare earths, while Trump doubled down as well, vowing not to change course.

China added 11 U.S. bodies to the “unreliable entity” list, which allows Beijing to take punitive actions against foreign entities, including firms linked to arms sales to democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory.

Other impacted nations like Canada have also readied retaliation in a mounting trade war after Trump raised U.S. tariff barriers to their highest level in more than a century, leading to a plunge in world financial markets.

Investment bank JP Morgan said it now sees a 60% chance of the global economy entering recession by year end, up from 40% previously.

Wall Street fell sharply at the opening on Friday, after China retaliated with fresh tariffs a day after the Trump administration’s sweeping levies knocked off $2.4 trillion from U.S. equities.

“China comes out swinging with an aggressive response to Trump’s tariffs,” said Stephane Ekolo, Market & Equity Strategist, Tradition, London.

“This is significant and is unlikely to be over, hence the negative market reactions. Investors are afraid of a ‘tit for tat’ trade war situation.”

Trump’s team has played down the market turbulence as an adjustment that would prove beneficial in the long run.

“To the many investors coming into the United States and investing massive amounts of money, my policies will never change. This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before!!!” Trump said in a social media post in all caps.

After Beijing’s retaliation, he posted that: “China played it wrong, they panicked – the one thing they cannot afford to do!”

Trump on Thursday had said he was open to talking to China and making a deal over TikTok by providing relief for U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for Beijing’s approval of the sale of the Byte Dance-owned short video app.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said it was just an example and did not answer a question on whether plans were underway for him to talk to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Shares of Big Tech stocks fell in premarket trading, with companies such as Apple AAPL.O and Nvidia NVDA.O having big exposure to China and Taiwan for manufacturing their products.

In Japan, one of United States’ top trading partners, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said the tariffs had created a “national crisis” as a plunge in banking shares on Friday set Tokyo’s stock market on course for its worst week in years.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday disputed any economic crash, telling reporters that markets were reacting to the change and would adjust.

“Their economies are not crashing. Their markets are reacting to a dramatic change in the global order in terms of trade,” he said at a press conference in Brussels. “The markets will adjust.”

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday will add his voice to a growing debate at the central bank over whether the Trump administration’s new policies are more likely to stoke higher inflation or undercut growth and employment so much the Fed will have to respond.

More:

https://gcaptain.com/china-hits-back-hard-in-global-trade-war-with-tariffs-on-us-goods/

‘Worse Than Covid’: Trump’s Port Fee Plan Could Upend U.S. Shipping Schedules

By Ira Breskin April 3, 2025

STAMFORD, CT — Shipping industry executives are considering options to address Trump administration policy changes, under consideration or enacted, that could significantly disrupt operations, speakers said here this week at the 40th annual Connecticut Maritime Association annual meeting.

Containership operators, for example, are weighing radical reconfiguration of ship schedules to avoid costly ship call-based port fees being considered by the Trump administration.

Should operators decide to reroute their vessels to major US “load center” ports, at the expense of smaller secondary ones, to reduce exposure to new fees, “it would absolutely crush us,” said Bethann Rooney, port director for the Port of New York and New Jersey. “We need to prepare to work effectively,” she said.

PONY/NJ is the busiest container port on the East Coast and among the busiest in the US.

The result “would be far worse than we saw on the West Coast during the (COVID-19) pandemic,” Rooney said during a presentation on Wednesday.

In early 2021, at the height of the pandemic, ports in San Pedro Bay experienced unprecedented congestion. Then, more than 100 ships sat at anchor awaiting an available berth at either the Port of Los Angeles or Long Beach, CA. San Pedro ports are the primary American gateway for imports from Asia.

Rerouting container ships to PONY/NJ from smaller East Coast ports would roughly double PONY/NJ container throughput to more than 16 million TEU containers annually, Rooney said.

Containership operators are considering major schedule adjustments to mitigate the impact of potential Trump administration-imposed port fees, as outlined in a recent memo from the US Trade Representative. Foreign-flagged ships calling at US ports would be subject to the fees, specific terms to be determined. The fees are sought to create an incentive to build and subsequently employ US-flagged commercial vessels.

Separately, three niche New England port operators are continuing to support building and maintenance operations at nearby wind farms that have operating permits. These ports are doing so following the Trump administration’s issuing of an Executive Order halting processing of permits to develop additional offshore wind farms in federal waters. (To offset any potential reduction in wind farm-related traffic, the three ports — located in New Bedford and Salem, MA and Quonset Point, RI — are working to attract heavy-lift and project cargo, representatives said at the conference.)

Schedule modifications, employed to reduce the impact of Trump-backed port fees, would significantly disrupt both liner or scheduled operations and services provided by ships under charter, other speakers said.

“Bifurcation of markets (tied to a two-tiered port market) would make shipping a lot more complex,” said Selena Challocombe, legal counsel for Intertanko, which represents independent tanker owners.

Drafting charter parties to mitigate the impact of the Trump administration’s proposed fees “is going to be complicated” because they are policy, not market-driven, said Michael Lund, who is chief operating officer for the Baltic and International Maritime Council, which provides many standard ship chartering contracts.

However, any resultant ship scheduling disruption may be short-lived, said Morten Arntzen, a senior advisor to Macquarie Bank. That is because Trump’s successor, when assuming office in January 2029, could overturn what industry executives warn would be a costly and disruptive requirement.

Ira Breskin is a senior lecturer at State University of New York Maritime College in the Bronx, NY and author of The Business of Shipping (9th edition, 2018), a primer that explains shipping economics, operations and regulations.

https://gcaptain.com/worse-than-covid-trumps-port-fees-could-upend-u-s-shipping-schedules/

>>22867464

Still the most incompetent mobsters ever

Tell me again how your neighbors are coating the leaves your yard with cyanide