cover of episode China retaliates with extra tariffs on US goods

China retaliates with extra tariffs on US goods

2025/4/4
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@Rob Young : 我是Rob Young,本期节目将关注中美两国之间的贸易战升级,以及由此引发的全球市场动荡。中国宣布对美国商品征收34%的报复性关税,美国国务卿则为特朗普政府的策略进行了辩护。此外,我们还将探讨印度和莱索托在应对美国关税方面的不同策略。 @周磊 :中国此次采取强硬的反制措施,既是为了展示自身实力,也是为了在谈判中占据更有利的地位。虽然中国是全球最大的出口国,需要保持全球市场的开放,但其目标仍然是与美国达成协议。美国对中国的贸易逆差巨大,而中国购买的美国商品中,农业产品受关税影响尤为严重。特朗普总统的关税措施超出了预期,中国政府将不得不采取更大规模的经济刺激计划来应对。中国企业家们对目前的局势感到非常担忧,正在重新考虑供应链问题。 @Colleen McHugh :全球市场对中美贸易战的升级感到担忧,担心其他国家也会采取类似的报复措施,引发全球贸易战。银行股价下跌是因为市场担心关税可能导致经济衰退,从而导致银行盈利下降。油价下跌是因为市场担心关税可能导致经济衰退,从而降低石油需求。 @Anup Wadhawan :美国对印度实施新关税损害了双方贸易谈判的良好氛围和诚意。印度不会为了达成贸易协议而做出任何让步,贸易协议应该是一个平衡且互利的过程。印度作为发展中国家,有必要对某些商品征收关税以保护本国产业,并认为美国忽视了印度在服务和知识产权等领域做出的让步。全球化是不可避免的趋势,虽然可能会出现一些调整,但它仍然是必要的。 @Graham MacDonald :JCB公司将扩大其在德克萨斯州的工厂规模,以应对美国关税的影响。 @Brian Panabekker :我支持特朗普总统的关税计划,认为这将有助于将生产带回美国。 @Dmitry Grozybinsky :每个国家都应该根据自身情况制定应对美国关税的策略,中国和印度的应对方法有所不同。中美贸易战将对双方都造成损害,中国企业和美国消费者都将受到影响。中国向WTO投诉是其多方面策略的一部分,旨在施压美国并维护国际规则。美国大幅提高关税使得谈判变得困难,因为谈判的基础发生了变化。 @Thabo Kessy :美国对莱索托商品征收50%的关税,将严重损害莱索托的纺织服装产业,导致企业倒闭和失业。一些莱索托企业已经因为关税问题而倒闭。莱索托政府将派代表团前往美国进行谈判,试图推翻关税决定。关税措施将对莱索托的多个行业造成负面影响,引发广泛的担忧。 @Graham Fraser :TikTok面临被禁的风险,因为美国政府担心其中国所有者可能会访问大量用户数据。

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China has announced a 34% retaliatory tariff on US goods in response to similar tariffs imposed by the US. This has caused significant drops in global financial markets due to fears of a global trade war and potential recession. The US Secretary of State defended the Trump administration's strategy, aiming to reset the global trade order.
  • China retaliated with 34% tariffs on US products
  • Global financial markets fell sharply
  • Beijing also tightened rare earth mineral exports
  • US Secretary of State defended the Trump administration's strategy

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Visit IDtech.com and use code IDTECH to save $150 on a week that's guaranteed to be a highlight of summer. Hello and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Rob Young. On this edition, the trade war between the world's two biggest economies has escalated. China says it will retaliate to America's retaliatory tariffs. Financial markets have fallen sharply in response. You'll get the latest from the trade conflict over the next half an hour.

Well, the corporate and financial worlds are still reeling from the global trade war sparked by President Trump's announcement of import taxes on almost everything that enters the United States from almost everywhere. One of the most important trading relationships there is, that between China and the United States, has become even more strained, as if that were even possible. China has today hit back hard, retaliating to a US decision to impose further tariffs on Chinese goods.

Beijing has announced additional tariffs of 34% on American products, matching Washington's latest move. Financial markets are sharply lower again on Friday as a result, amid fears that a global tit-for-tat trade conflict will lead to company profits tumbling and a recession in the world's biggest economy.

Speaking in Brussels after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, defended the Trump administration's strategy. Markets are crashing because markets are based on the stock value of companies who today are embedded in modes of production that are bad for the United States. We have to be a country that thinks we're the largest consumer market in the world, and yet the only thing we export is services.

And we need to stop that. We need to get back to a time where we're a country that can make things. And to do that, we have to reset the global order of trade. So the president rightly has concluded that the current status of global trade is bad for America and good for a bunch of other people. And he's going to reset it. And he's absolutely right to do it.

Well, in addition to China's announcement of additional tariffs of 34% on US goods on Friday, Beijing also said it would take other measures, such as tightening the export of so-called rare earth minerals, which are critical in high-tech products. Well, President Trump has since goaded China...

saying on social media, China played it wrong. They panicked. The one thing they cannot afford to do. And his message was written all in capital letters. Well, for more on China's response, here's Zhou Lei, the bureau chief for the Financial Times in Beijing.

China up until now has been relatively restrained. The US has already put 20% tariffs on China, two lots of 10. China retaliated with tariffs on US agricultural imports, but those sort of a little bit less than what the US had done. But this time, it seems like China's really just going all out and slapping the same tariff on all US imports, as well as some export controls and other non-tariff measures. What then do you think is China's plan? Is it just to show China

Donald Trump, that they are just as tough and as strong as he is? Or are they trying to do something else? Are they trying to kind of escalate to de-escalate this? What do you think is going on? I think it's more the latter. They do need to show strength. China's not the

the kind of place that's going to go running to the US to try to negotiate. But China's position is not as strong as it might look. China is the world's largest exporter. It does need global markets to stay open. So it will be quite keen, even through all of this, to try to negotiate a deal with Trump. But at this stage, I think this retaliation does show that they are putting on a tough face on the negotiations. Does China buy much from the United States? We know that

American consumers seem to have an almost unending appetite for goods produced from China. But what's the trading flow the other way? Well, to be honest, it's much less. I mean, the US runs a huge deficit with China, but China does buy a lot of exports that are important for the US, such as agricultural exports.

And these have been particularly hard hit in previous rounds of tariffs. And this year, so far, there have been very few shipments of U.S. agricultural goods. So it's already starting to hit U.S. farmers. And if this escalation doesn't lead to a deal and some kind of de-escalation in the near term, what's the next step?

What's the Chinese government's plan for how it protects the economy and protects jobs in manufacturing? China's government is going to have to do a lot more on the domestic front. It'll have to essentially stimulate the economy much more than it's been planning to so far. These tariffs that are coming from Donald Trump, they're at the extreme end of what people were expecting. He did warn that he might slap 60% tariffs on China, but I think people had thought that maybe a negotiation would be possible first.

But what he has announced, according to some economists, is even higher than 60%. So China's government is going to have to launch a massive stimulus program if it wants to make up for the impact on its industries. I know it can be difficult to work out what Chinese people really think, but what is your sense of...

of what company bosses, of what Chinese consumers are thinking, are feeling, are planning to do? For Chinese company bosses, this is really terrible, terrible news. You know, I've been talking to exporters this whole year and last year. And, you know, when the first sort of 10% came in, they were kind of happy because they thought they were going to get hit with 60%. And now that the 60% has come, you know, this is really forcing them to seriously think about their supply chain's

Right.

Rob, the markets are not liking this. I mean, clearly they weren't happy yesterday. I mean, we had, you know, the S&P 500 down over 5% yesterday, nearly 5% yesterday. And today that pain is continuing. The markets opened broadly lower this morning, but went a lot lower when these retaliatory tariffs were announced by Beijing. So the real fear here is that

what China is doing is, you know, will this be replicated by the EU? Does the EU turn around and say, well, you know, we're going to impose our own tariffs on

on US imports. So, you know, it's this whole notion of now are we about to see a global trade war and markets are really not liking it. At the moment, we've got the S&P down about 4%. Again, that's back on the back of yesterday's decline. We've got similar declines in the Euro stock 50 and the FTSE 100.

The Nikkei closed down, the Japanese Nikkei closed down nearly 3% and the Hang Seng is down 1% on the day as well. Only asset class that's rallying at the moment is treasuries. Flight to safety on US treasuries at the moment.

So investors perceive the US government to be the safest haven, even though it is the US government which is causing all of this chaos. Yeah, exactly. It's quite ironic, isn't it? But the flip side of that actually is the dollar. We generally see the dollar performing well in terms of turmoil. Of course, when that turmoil starts in the US, then you have investors scrambling for other currencies and

massive appreciation over the last 24 hours in the yen, Swiss franc. Even the euro is outperforming the dollar, which is a little bit odd. But then again, it is probably the most liquid G10 currency after the dollar. So perhaps no surprising really there. All right. Thanks for now. Colleen, I want to come back to you to take a closer look at what is happening in different areas of the markets a bit later on. Now, we heard what China...

is doing in its approach to the United States a few minutes ago. India, though, is taking an entirely different line because India and the United States have been holding talks about reaching a possible trade agreement. Indeed, just this week, New Delhi said it hoped to be able to report progress very soon. But the US is still imposing new trade tariffs on goods from India. 27% they will be as of next week.

So the need to reach a deal is even more urgent. I've been speaking to Anup Wadhawan, who's the former Commerce Secretary in India. Does he think this change, does this latest development change the terms of those trade talks?

In some ways, it spoils the pitch for a good faith negotiation and it tarnishes the atmosphere of conduciveness and cordiality. India would be working with the US to put

put these reciprocal duties aside because they don't convey a good faith intent as far as the trade negotiations go. What is India likely to have to offer the United States to get a trade deal and therefore get these 27% tariffs removed?

There's no question of offering anything. A trade deal is a well-structured, systematic process. Both countries have their ambitions and wish lists and they convey those to each other. And then each country examines them, processes them and sees what they can do for the other side, what they can't do, what they can do with some sort of moderation or safeguard.

And that applies to both sides. And ultimately, you reach something which is balanced and, you know, mutually beneficial. The White House said the other day in a document it released alongside the tariff list was that apples that enter the United States do so free of duty. But in India, the duty is 50%. That is clearly something that annoys the United States. They also said that computer Wi-Fi routers, when they enter the United States, have no tariff. But in India...

there are tariffs of between 10 and 20%. So they're clearly two areas that the White House is particularly irritated by. Do you think India should abolish those tariffs? I don't think so. There is no scope for any irritation. India is a developing country at a per capita income of $2,800. US is a highly advanced nation with a per capita income over $80,000. And all our

Bound rates were negotiated at the WTO and they were paid for in terms of concessions offered to the developed world in services and intellectual property rights, e-commerce and that is how all these American companies, the Googles and the Microsofts and the Amazons are prospering.

Of course, President Trump is not thinking beyond goods. He's not counting the huge profits these companies make. He's not counting the huge income which accrue to American entities through those activities and which gives America per capita income of $80,000. You know, we are a low-income country. Our farmers are particularly low-income. So to the extent to protect agricultural products, it's understandable.

And they look at the subsidies that the US gives to its agriculture. So where does that leave India? We need to have some protections in place. There's been a lot of talk this week about how the period of globalization that has seen the world get richer over the past 30 or so years is now over, that the terms of trade that people have become used to have been torn up.

Do you think they have? Globalization is not going away. Globalization is not there because it's a fashion of sorts. It is there because it's a necessity. And the logic is efficiency and cost minimization. No country by itself can, you know, be self-sufficient. No country by itself can produce everything it needs. No country can by itself do every activity with the

cutting edge level of efficiency. So that is how global value chains have emerged, an element of shrinkage in globalization where countries want to produce some critical things by themselves. Some reordering will happen, but globalization is there to stay.

Former Indian Commerce Secretary Anup Wadawan there. Well, what do you make of what is happening at the moment? Do send us your thoughts by WhatsApp. Send us a voice note. The number you need is plus 44-330-678-3033. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

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You're with World Business Report from the BBC World Service. Well, companies as well as countries are trying to work out how to respond to the US tariffs. The boss of the British digger company JCB says it will double the size of its new factory in Texas in the United States to one million square feet to mitigate the impact, as it put it, of the tariffs. Here's Graham MacDonald speaking to the BBC's Felicity Hanna. We can't ignore the biggest market in the world. You know, we've been there for decades. And this investment...

is not for the next four or five years. This investment's for the next 50 years. You know, we have a factory in Savannah in Georgia that's been there for 25 years. It's still going strong. And we intend this to carry the business through for the next 50 years. But, you know, we've got to be pragmatic about our decisions. You know, we face these tariffs. No one wants to be in this position. But we've got to be pragmatic at what actions we can take quickly to try and mitigate the impact on our business.

Boss of digger company JCB there. And let's hear now from Brian Panabekker. You may remember him as the former car factory worker from Michigan who was brought up on the stage by Donald Trump during the tariff announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House on Tuesday. He said he backs the tariff's plan.

I understand completely what he's trying to do with tariffs, and that is bring production back into the United States. And I had two automotive plants in my county close in the last few years where thousands of auto workers lost their jobs. We've seen our plants close and those products be moved to Mexico, and then the

They're shipped right back in. They're paying the workers down their subpar wages. They're taking advantage of us. They're taking our jobs away. They're making record profits, billions of dollars a year in profits. So we want those jobs returned to the United States. And Donald Trump says he knows how to do it.

Let's speak now to Dmitry Grozybinsky, who's a former Australian trade negotiator and is now the executive director of the Geneva Trade Platform, also founder of the consultancy ExplainTrade. Welcome to the programme. What is the best way to respond to this US tariff onslaught? Is it the Chinese response, which is to hit back just as hard, or is it the Indian response, which is to say, let's sit down and talk calmly about this?

I think every country has to find the right response for them, and those are going to vary wildly. The Chinese have been in the US crosshairs for a very long time. It's patently obvious that there isn't a quick deal to be done here, especially not a lasting deal. And the Chinese have a great deal of market power with which to swing back at the United States.

India was, as you mentioned earlier in the program, potentially on the cusp of a deal already. They can't hurt the US as much as the Chinese can by withholding access to the Indian market. So they have more dependency. That gives them less of a bat to swing. And Modi and Trump have a really good personal relationship, which I think gives them hope for getting a deal done. So it's different strokes for different folks. And when you look at this Chinese retaliation today and...

Donald Trump saying that China is panicking. What's your assessment of who has got the most to lose from this battle? Is it Chinese factory workers or American consumers?

This is going to be painful for a lot of people on every side. Pain is not zero sum. So it's going to be quite a difficult time for Chinese companies because even those Chinese companies that in previous years have moved production to places like Vietnam and Cambodia are now finding themselves hit over there too. And that certainly makes it difficult for them. As you said earlier in the program, China is an export country.

focused economy, still much more than the US's, and that hurts. On the other hand, American consumers, especially those American consumers at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, will face higher prices, and that is going to hurt. And American production will lose some of the components it needs at affordable prices, and that's going to hurt too.

We heard China say today that they've complained about the United States' actions to the World Trade Organization, saying that the new tariffs are a blatant violation of WTO rules. Is it pointless them complaining to the WTO because it has no power to restrain Donald Trump, does it?

International law has never come up with a way of restraining a global superpower that wants to do something. However, I think what the Chinese are doing is trying to run a multifaceted strategy where one of the ways that they are trying to pile on a few more ounces of pressure onto the U.S. is through sanctions.

global condemnation. And they're also trying to send a signal to other countries and to investors that while the US is disregarding the rules of the game and the treaties it signed up for, the Chinese want to position themselves as law abiding and champions of those rules. Mileage may vary. We heard the former Indian Commerce Minister say earlier on that

This will be a negotiation between India and the United States where there'll be concessions on both sides. Is that how you see it when you hear what Donald Trump and his advisers are saying? They're saying, if you offer us stuff, we might cut the tariffs. They're not saying this is a negotiation where we're also going to make concessions, are they?

The US has put the rest of the world into quite a difficult situation. Ordinarily, when we are negotiating free trade agreements, we're talking about our existing regimes as they've existed for years, and each side is offering concessions on the way their systems work.

Here, by raising these tariffs so high, the US has effectively created a negotiating coin from nothing. So you would be trading real ways your system has worked for years against ways their system didn't work until two days ago. And that is a difficult position for parties to be in because even though you may be trading something below US tariffs, those are US tariffs they've just raised now.

And that makes it a difficult negotiation. Certainly can be hard to see the US administration as it currently stands from putting too much on the table. Additionally, they don't appear to be in that mood. Thanks very much indeed. Dmitry Grozobinsky, their former Australian trade negotiator, now executive director of the Geneva Trade Platform.

Let's go back to Colleen McHugh now, Investment Director at Wealthify. I want to break the market down into various kind of sections if we can and just look at the share markets first of all.

We know why companies that make clothes in Asia, for example, or electronics in China that are then going to America are seeing their share price fall because the cost of their goods when they're imported into America is going to go up. But why are we seeing the share price of banks fall, for example? How are they affected by all this? Well, it's not tariffs. Basically, Rob, it's the fact that earnings are going to fall.

So if you have earnings going to fall, that means that those earnings need to be reflected in lower share prices. And that's what we're going to see in the next couple of weeks. We've got earnings easing fast approaching, specifically to banks. The thought is that, oh my goodness, are we now going to see elevated interest rate cuts required? Because is this tariff situation going to develop into a full-blown recession?

And what we've seen in the markets over the last 24 hours is, particularly in the US, we've seen a situation where additional rate cuts are now being priced by the markets. And banks just don't like that and this uncertainty. And of course, if we do go into recession, that will have an impact in terms of their loans and other parts of their business. Right. So banks make less money when interest rates are low. What about commodities, stuff like oil and copper? We've seen falls there too. Why is that briefly? Yeah.

Yeah, so again, the oil is off. It's fallen to a four-year low. It's trading at about $62 a barrel at the moment. It was about $72 a couple of days ago. And the reason for that, again, is this sense that

are tariffs going to trigger a recession? And therefore, if we're in a recession, there is going to be a lower demand for oil. So it's very much a demand story. Interestingly, I've been looking at gold. Gold is your usual safe haven trade. It's been up remarkably year to date, but in the last couple of days, it's been quite erratic and it's actually down. I suspect there's a little bit of...

trading going on there. It's very liquid and I suspect people are just taking a little bit off

an asset that's done very well year to date and just raising some cash and having some optionality amidst all this uncertainty. Thanks very much, Colleen McHugh there from Wealthify. Let's hear now from the tiny southern African nation of Lesotho. It is one of the country's worst hit by President Trump's tariffs. Lesotho, which is one of the world's poorest countries, has been slapped with 50% tariffs on all of its exports to the United States.

Let's speak now to Thabo Kessy, who's an economist and chief executive of the Private Sector Foundation of Lesotho. Welcome to the programme. How are businesses, particularly those that export to the United States, reacting to this announcement?

Clearly, they cannot proceed to do production in Lesotho in view of exporting to the US market because they have been enjoying duty-free, quota-free trade arrangement under Agua since the 2000s. That's the African Growth and Opportunity Act which allowed duty-free exports into America. Exactly. So now, moving from 0% to 50%,

It's quite heavy for them, so it won't appetise them, you know. It won't be lucrative for them to do the production here in Lesotho. Clearly, they are going to shut down. And textile and apparel sector here in Lesotho is the largest employer for more than 40,000 workers, direct jobs. Have any companies said they're going to close already? Yeah, some have already closed. Some.

Yes. The thing is, if you look at jeans, I mean, and what could be more iconic in American garments than jeans? And Lesotho does make an awful lot of quite well-known jeans brands, doesn't it? They are still cheaper to make in Lesotho than in America, aren't they?

They are. They are, yes. You talk of Levi's, yes. Yes. Yeah, so many jeans, T-shirts, tracksuits, yes, they were produced here, saving the markets like JCPenney, yes, Walmart, yes, they were sourcing products here in Lesotho. What can the Lesotho government do then? What can it offer the Trump administration to try to have these tariffs overturned?

Yesterday, after the announcement of these new tariffs, the Minister of Trade made a statement in Parliament

showing that they will prepare a delegation which will go to the US to negotiate with the US government and also lobbying the Congress members, you know, maybe to revisit that decision. So we don't know what the future holds. But as we can see, how the new administration in the US is handling things.

I don't see that there's going to be a significant change. So people must be very worried, are they, working workers? Yeah, they are extremely worried. Even other sectors like transport, retail, because those workers, there were so many. They were renting houses, so it means...

Property owners, they are going to lose. Transport sector is going to lose. Retail, financial services, telecommunication, insurance, you know. So many sectors are going to be negatively affected by this measure. Thanks so much. Thabuk Kese there joining us from Lesotho. We're going to move away from the trade conflict now to talk about the hugely popular video sharing app TikTok, which is just

hours away from a deadline to find a non-Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States. Here's the BBC senior tech reporter, Graham Fraser. President Donald Trump has said he is very close to brokering a deal to find a buyer for TikTok. The popular video app faces a ban in the US if its Chinese owner ByteDance does not sell it. And the deadline for that sale is Saturday. A bipartisan law passed by Congress last year mandates ByteDance to sell the app.

The platform went dark for a day in January in the US after the law took effect and it came back online after Trump intervened and delayed the ban. The US government has said TikTok poses a threat to national security because Chinese authorities might access its vast trove of user data. Beijing denies this. The White House is reportedly considering an option where ByteDance would keep the ownership of TikTok's algorithm but lease it to a new entity operating the app within the US.

There are many reports about who is interested in buying TikTok. They include the founder of adult website-only fans, Amazon, and the biggest YouTuber in the world. And then there is tariffs. President Trump has said he might cut Chinese tariffs to help seal a TikTok deal. Tech reporter Graham Fraser. And you can get the latest on that story and the trade conflict on our website at bbcnews.com.

This is Steve Covino from Covino & Rich. Here to tell you Toyota's legacy has been standing tall for generations. From pioneering hybrid technology to redefining the standards of safety and efficiency. With each innovation, a commitment to progress. And with a legendary lineup of in-stock trucks, including the ultra-rugged new Tacoma and heavy-duty half-ton Tundra, you can experience the legacy of Toyota for yourself. Visit BuyAToyota.com, the official website for deals, to find out more. Toyota, let's go places.