‘Very volatile’: Beijing retaliates with tariffs on US imports, Google probe

Google, which is blocked in China, would be investigated for allegedly violating the country’s anti-monopoly laws, the State Administration for Market Regulation said.

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Chinese authorities also announced further export controls on certain critical minerals used in high-tech industries, citing the need to safeguard “national security and interests”. In addition, two American companies – PVH Corp, which owns Calvin Klein, and biotechnology company Illumina – were put on a trade blacklist.

“The situation is very volatile,” said Dr Alfred Wu, a Chinese politics expert at the National University of Singapore.

“It really depends on the talks between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping – these two people are very hard to predict.”

China repeated its argument that the US tariffs “seriously violates” the rules of the World Trade Organisation, where it has vowed to formally lodge a legal suit.

“It is not only unhelpful in solving its own problems, but also undermines the normal economic and trade co-operation between China and the US,” China’s Finance Ministry said.

The tit-for-tat tariffs revive a trade war that kicked off during Trump’s first administration when he began setting tariffs on Chinese goods, many of which were retained and expanded on by the Biden administration.

A so-called “phase one” deal was brokered between Trump and Xi in 2020, which involved China agreeing to buy an additional $US200 billion of US products, in exchange for a rollback of some tariffs. But China’s commitments were widely regarded as unachievable from the outset and were hindered by the COVID pandemic.