“I’m ready to go 500”, said U.S. President Donald Trump in CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’ interview. The reference is to the $505.5 billion worth of Chinese goods that are imported into the U.S., on which Trump apparently won’t hesitate to slap tariffs if he feels the need. Just a couple of days back, the Trump administration announced 10% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports.
So far, $34 billion of Chinese goods have already met with Trump’s tariffs, to which China had responded with levies on $34 billion of U.S. goods imported into its nation.
Trump seems to be in no mood to give up his one-upmanship in this apparent ‘tariff war’, as is suggested by his ‘threats’ and actions in recent days. The investigation he ordered suggested that China was violating U.S. intellectual property - something that seemingly triggered Trump's tariff outburst. What could be a potential disadvantage for China in this trade battle is that the dollar volume of Chinese imports into the U.S. is much larger than what China imports from the U.S.