President Trump is enacting a 25 percent tariff on $50 billion of Chinese goods “that contain industrially significant technologies,” after months of exchanging threats amid concerns over a potential trade war.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection will begin to collect tariffs on the first $34 billion worth of Chinese imports on July 6. A second set of imports subject to tariffs is still under review.
China quickly announced it would impose retaliatory tariffs of the same size.
The White House had set a June 15 deadline for announcing the full list of items that will see a tariff imposed, focusing on areas such as aerospace, robotics and machinery. Released Friday, the list includes some 1,100 products.
Trump announced Friday:
“My great friendship with President Xi 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. China has, for example, long been engaging in several unfair practices related to the acquisition of American intellectual property and technology.”