Economy

China is Retaliating for Trump’s Trade War Again

Written by SK Ashby

China announced this morning that they're imposing retaliatory anti-dumping tariffs on American technology in response to Trump latest around of tariffs on imports from China.

The massive anti-dumping tariffs (nearly 80 percent in some cases) will effectively end the import of American fiber optics and will take effect on July 11th.

The new anti-dumping tariff rates for dispersion unshifted single-mode optical fiber imported from the U.S. range between 33.3 percent to 78.2 percent, compared with 4.7 percent to 18.6 percent as set in 2011.

U.S. companies including Corning Inc, OFS Fitel, LLC and Draka Communications Americas Inc are among firms affected by the tariff change, the [Chinese commerce ministry] said on its website.

To be clear, an anti-dumping tariff is a tariff that charges more for a product up front to ensure that it's not sold at less than market value to get rid of it; hence the term "dumping."

It's not clear if American technology companies have actually been dumping products in China, but there have been reports that ships carrying other American products were racing to China to beat the deadline before Trump's trade war went into effect.

In related news, over 40 countries filed a complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO) opposing Trump's stated intention of imposing tariffs on automobiles for "national security" reasons.

Over 40 WTO members, including the 28 countries of the European Union – warned that the U.S. action could seriously disrupt the world market and threaten the WTO system, given the importance of cars to world trade. [...]

China, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Turkey, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Singapore, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Qatar, Thailand and India all echoed the same concerns and said they doubted the U.S. tariffs were in line with WTO rules.

The U.S. diplomat at the meeting said the matter was already the subject of formal disputes at the WTO, so it should not be on the committee’s agenda, the official who attended the meeting said.

We may never recover from Trump.

I mean, even if we do, the new world order is not going to look anything like it did in the past. China or the European Union, or both, will probably be sitting at the center of it.

If Americans continue to insist on electing reactionary idiots to public office, maybe we shouldn't be in the driver's seat.