tariffs

The European Union’s European Commission head, Jean-Claude Juncker, flew to Washington to have a sit down with US President Donald Trump about the tense trade situation between the traditional allies and trade partners. Trump’s tariffs programme might have been billed as a national security precaution, but that’s just how he managed to get it by Congress. The rhetoric surrounding Trump’s trade policy as it relates to the EU had to do with negotiating ‘better’ deals, because the current ones just aren’t good enough for America.

US President Donald Trump has just lectured NATO on it member’s commitment performance and held a controversial meeting with the Russian President Vladimir Putin and is next week to receive EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, with trade matters being high up on the agenda.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet US President Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland on July 16 but most of the talks will focus on the Syrian conflict [PPIO]
 
A week after resorting to the World Trade Organization in its complaint against US tariffs on Russian steel and aluminum, Moscow has raised its duties from 25 to 40 per cent on some US imports.
According to the Russian news agency TASS, Economic Development Minister Maksim Oreshkin said the rise was to compensate for more than $500 million loss in exports expected due to the US tariffs.

(TFC) – The opening shots of the largest trade war in history were fired this morning at midnight EST. President Trump’s tariffs went into effect. “China is forced to strike back to safeguard core national interests and the interests of its people,” said the Chinese commerce ministry. China is expected to return fire by adding tariffs to […]

China: Commerce official Gao Feng said that US measures are essentially attacking global supply and value chains and that China will not bow down to threats and blackmail. US Customs and Border Protection officials are due to collect 25% duties on a range of products including motor vehicles, computer disk drives, parts of pumps, valves and printers and many other industrial components. [...]

Chinese President Xi Jinping maintains a good relationship with Trump, but Chinese media has called the US a trade bully
 
US President Donald Trump has warned of imposing tariffs on as much as $500 billion in Chinese exports if Beijing retaliates against his administration’s $34 billion levies which went into effect July 6.

China has declared that if a trade war goes down between China and the United States, it won’t be at China’s volition or instigation, declaring that should it happen, it will be the fault of the Trump administration in Washington, D.C. The US has prepared a round of tariffs on Chinese imported goods worth some $34 billion to go into effect on July 6. At the same time, Beijing has prepared its response to the American action, and is set to respond with countermeasures of equal weight.

As the Trump administration ramps up its trade war with its allies and trade partners, some of them seem to be reluctant to admit this new reality, refusing the formation of an alliance to combat Trump’s economic warfare at the World Trade Organization (WTO). China has proposed a sort of alliance with the EU to oppose Trump’s tariffs measures before the WTO, whereas the EU is of the opinion that this is not a necessary step, hoping that the situation can still be defused through strategic diplomacy.

GENEVA — President Donald Trump’s threat to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that a failure to treat the U.S. “properly” will mean “we will be doing something” has sent shockwaves rippling through Western capitals who fear that the “America First” agenda is increasingly leading to bruising fights with the other powers who comprise the globalized, neoliberal trade system.

WASHINGTON — The Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington issued a starkly-worded travel advisory this week for summer tourists traveling to the United States, explaining in so many words that traveling to the country could be hazardous to one’s health unless one takes proper precautions.
The advisory reads in large part like a virtual laundry list of U.S. social problems, naming the exorbitant cost of healthcare, frequent crime, and gun violence as potential threats to traveler safety: