China vows 'countermeasures' against Trump tariffs; to mount challenge in WTO

Beijing: China's government on Sunday denounced the Trump administration's imposition of a long-threatened 10 per cent tariff on Chinese imports while leaving the door open for talks with the US that could avoid a deepening conflict.

Beijing will challenge President Donald Trump's tariff at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and take unspecified “countermeasures” in response to the levy, which takes effect on Tuesday, the finance and commerce ministries said.

The response stopped short of the immediate escalation that had marked China's trade showdown with Trump in his first term as president and repeated the more measured language Beijing has used in recent weeks.

Trump on Saturday ordered 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports and 10 per cent on goods from China, saying Beijing needed to stanch the flow of fentanyl, a deadly opioid, into the United States.

China's commerce ministry said in a statement that Trump's move "seriously violates" international trade rules, urging the US to "engage in frank dialogue and strengthen cooperation".

Filing a lawsuit with the WTO would be a largely symbolic move that Beijing has also taken against tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles by the European Union.

For weeks Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has said Beijing believes there is no winner in a trade war.

China's sharpest pushback on Sunday was over fentanyl, an area where the administration of Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, had also been urging Beijing to crack down on shipments of the China-made precursor chemicals needed to manufacture the drug.

"Fentanyl is America's problem," China's foreign ministry said. "The Chinese side has carried out extensive anti-narcotics cooperation with the United States and achieved remarkable results."