China announced Friday it plans to match the 25 percent tariff on $50 billion worth of goods the United States exports to the Asian country following President Trump’s expansion announcement earlier in the day.
China will “retaliate for Trump’s tariffs by immediately imposing penalties of the same scale on American goods,” according to the Associated Press.
Hours earlier, Trump said the U.S. would hit China with substantive tariffs, including an additional 284 items that had previously not been eligible. Many of the tariffs on this follow-up list to the original one announced in April are directed at the aerospace, information, and communications technology industries.
“My great friendship with President Xi [Jinping] of China and our country’s relationship with China are both very important to me. Trade between our nations, however, has been very unfair, for a very long time. This situation is no longer sustainable,” Trump said Friday.
“China has, for example, long been engaging in several unfair practices related to the acquisition of American intellectual property and technology,” he added. “These practices … harm our economic and national security and deepen our already massive trade imbalance with China.”
Trump has touted his friendship with Xi and both worked together in the months leading up to this week’s summit in Singapore to ensure North Korean leader Kim Jong Un showed up to the meeting and that his government began to denuclearize.
