China has never given up to external pressure and it will win any trade war with the United States, the nation’s state media stressed in the hours after the world’s two top economies targeted each other with planned steep tariffs.
In Washington, U.S. administration officials continued to seek to allay market fears of a trade war and expressed a willingness to negotiate a resolution with China.
“There is a process here. There’s going to be some back and forth, but there’s also some negotiations,” White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said. “I think we are going to get a deal over a period of time,” he said in an interview with Fox Business Network.
China’s ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that Beijing preferred to resolve the trade dispute through negotiations, but China’s official mouthpieces took a tough stance.
The ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper said Beijing’s quick counter-move after Washington announced new tariffs this week had caught the Americans off guard.
“Within 24 hours of the U.S. publishing its list, China drew its sword, and with the same strength and to the same scale, counterattacked quickly, fiercely and with determination,” the paper said in a commentary on Thursday.
“The confidence to know that [China] will win the trade war comes from the scale of [China’s] consumer market,” the paper said, noting that China’s market potential is incomparable to other economies.
Many American consumer product and industrial companies see the Chinese market as a big source for future growth given the continued rise in the number of people joining both the middle class and the wealthier levels of Chinese society.
The United States’ proposed list of $50 billion in duties on Chinese goods is aimed at forcing Beijing to address what Washington says is deeply entrenched theft of U.S. intellectual property and forced technology transfer from American companies.
China hit back within hours with its own threatened tariffs on U.S. imports including soybeans, planes, cars, whiskey and chemicals.
The official Xinhua news agency said late on Wednesday that the U.S. tariffs proposal would cost the United States “dearly.”
“China will not be afraid or back down if a trade war is unavoidable. The country has never surrendered to external pressure, and it will not surrender this time either,” Xinhua said.
Kudlow had told Fox News on Wednesday, “I believe that the Chinese will back down and will play ball.”
Neither of the tariff lists issued by the two countries has gone into effect yet. Washington will hold public comment period expected to last around two months, and Chinese officials have said its implementation will depend on U.S. action.
“China’s counter tariffs are a spectacular way of standing up to America’s bullying tactics, not only for itself but for other countries threatened by the United States’ new trade policies.”
Source: Reuters
