The Tariff War between the US and China took a new turn on April 8, 2025, with US President Donald John Trump imposing 50% additional tariff on the Asian powerhouse. Trump triggered the trade war on April 2 by imposing a 34% tariff on goods exported from China (to the US). Beijing, too, imposed a 34% tariff on US products on April 3 as a countermeasure. Five days after China made the move, the US President announced that his administration would impose an additional 50% tariff on Chinese goods from April 9 (if Beijing sticks to its decision). Meanwhile, the Xi Jinping Government has hit back at President Trump’s decision to impose 104% tariff on Chinese products, claiming that the US is making “mistake on top of a mistake“.

If President Trump fully implements his plan, the total tariffs on goods imported into the US from China would be as much as 104%! In that case, there would be no Chinese products in the US market in near future. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has strongly criticised the US tariff policy, mentioning in a statement: “The US threat to escalate tariffs against China is a mistake on top of a mistake, which once again exposes the US’ blackmailing nature. China will never accept this. If the US insists on going its own way, China will fight it to the end.”

Although Beijing has not clarified how it would fight the war, political analysts are of the opinion that China, too, could impose higher tariffs on US products. They believe that such a move would certainly hit the US companies operating on Chinese soil hard. With this, globalisation may come to an end.

President Trump lashed out at Beijing on social media after China imposed 34% retaliatory tariffs on US products. He also accused the Asian nation of engaging in unethical business practices and artificially changing the value of its currency, stating: “Any country that retaliates against the US by issuing additional tariffs, above and beyond their already existing long term tariff abuse of our nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher tariffs, over and above those initially set.” The US President added: “Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long-term trading abuses by April 8, 2025, the US will impose additional tariffs on China of 50%, effective from April 9.” According to Trump, China “panicked” and “played it wrong” by announcing 34% levies against all US products.

Meanwhile, global stocks have mostly closed lower after wild swings in the market since President Trump announced his new Tariff Policy on April 2, as investors scramble to make sense of the US President’s plans. The world’s 500 richest people, including President Trump’s business allies, lost a collective USD 536 billion in the first couple of days of stock market trading after his Liberation Day announcement. While Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg each lost close to USD 10 billion by the end of the trading day on April 4 alone, Elon Musk‘s net worth declined by USD 20 billion, with year-to-date declines totalling over USD 130 billion.

Although trillions of Dollars have wiped off the value of US companies since the beginning of his tariff rampage, Trump said: “Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.“

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das