WORLD NEWS: CHINA TO RAISE TARIFFS ON US GOODS TO 125% SATURDAY

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China announced on Friday that it will increase tariffs on US goods to 125% but would disregard additional duties imposed by President Donald Trump since it is no longer profitable for importers to purchase goods from the US.

Following a week of market chaos during which the two biggest economies in the world alternately erected trade barriers, Beijing rejected Trump’s increasing threats as a “joke” and a “numbers game.”

China said the United States “should bear full responsibility” for the disruption and accused Trump of causing market turbulence with the global taxes.

Trump has used sweeping tariffs as a stick to compel firms to locate in the US and for nations to reduce their barriers to US exports, including excruciatingly high charges for dozens of big economies.

However, in response to this week’s market turbulence, he blinked first in his efforts to restructure the post-war global trade system and froze many tariffs for ninety days, even if he increased them for China to an astounding 145 percent.

With effect from Saturday, Beijing’s most recent wave of reprisal raises its taxes to 125 percent.

However, the Chinese finance ministry stated that since “there is no possibility of market acceptance for US goods exported to China at the current tariff level,” any additional US action will be disregarded.

“The United States’ imposition of round upon round of abnormally high tariffs on China has become a numbers game with no practical significance in economics,” Beijing’s commerce ministry said.

“If the US continues to play the tariff numbers game, China will ignore it,” a spokesperson said.

Beijing also said it would file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization over the latest round of levies.

Trump has acknowledged “a transition cost and transition problems” arising from his tariff strategy, but he has dismissed global market turmoil.

“In the end it’s going to be a beautiful thing,” he said.

He described the European Union as “very smart” to refrain from retaliatory levies.

“(The EU) were ready to announce retaliation. And then they heard about what we did concerning China’,” Trump said.

But the 27-nation bloc’s chief Ursula von der Leyen told the Financial Times that it remained armed with a “wide range of countermeasures” if negotiations with Trump hit the skids.

“An example is you could put a levy on the advertising revenues of digital services” applying across the bloc, she said.

French President Emmanuel Macron also urged the EU to keep preparing action to counter the tariffs, which are only paused but not scrapped.

“With the European Commission, we must show ourselves as strong: Europe must continue to work on all the necessary counter-measures,” he said on X.

At talks with Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday, state media quoted Xi as saying that China and the EU should simply team up on the issue.

“China and Europe should fulfil their international responsibilities… and jointly resist unilateral bullying practices,” Xi said.