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China on Sunday said “we are not afraid of” a trade war with the United States after President Donald Trump vowed to impose punishing new retaliatory tariffs on Chinese imports.
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce accused the U.S. of a “textbook double standard” with Trump’s promise on Friday to tack on additional 100% tariffs on those imports after China imposed new export controls on rare earths minerals.
That promise in a social media post by the president shook U.S. stock markets on Friday, erasing $2 trillion in equity values in a single day.
Willful threats of high tariffs are not the right way to get along with China, the ministry spokesperson said.
“China’s position on the trade war is consistent: we do not want it, but we are not afraid of it,” they added.
The spokesperson said that the United States “for a long time … has been overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export control, taking discriminatory actions against China, and imposing unilateral long-arm jurisdiction measures on various products, including semiconductor equipment and chips.”
The U.S. Commerce Control list covers more than 3,000 items, more than three times the approximately 900 items on China’s Export Control List of Dual-use Items, the spokesperson said.
China called its export controls on rare earth exports a “legitimate” measure under international law, pushing back against U.S. accusations of economic coercion.
The Commerce Ministry said the controls, issued Thursday, were part of Beijing’s effort to strengthen its export control system and “better safeguard world peace and regional stability” amid what it described as a turbulent global security environment.