United States President Donald Trump said this Friday (10) that he no longer sees any reason to meet with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, and threatened a “massive increase” in tariffs on Chinese products in response to what he called the Asian giant’s attempts to “impose export controls” on rare earths.
In a long message on the Truth Social platform, the American president stated that China “is becoming very hostile and is sending letters to countries around the world to announce that it wants to impose export controls on all rare earth-related products and practically anything else you can imagine.”
According to the US president, this measure “would congest the markets and make life difficult for practically all countries, especially China”, and said that several nations have already contacted Washington “outraged by this commercial hostility”.
“I didn’t speak to President Xi because there was no reason to. It was a real surprise, not just for me, but for all the leaders of the free world. I was scheduled to meet with President Xi in two weeks at Apec [Cooperação Econômica Ásia-Pacífico] in South Korea, but now there appears to be no reason to do so,” Trump said.
The Republican announced that, depending on China’s response, the United States will “combat” its actions. “For every product they manage to monopolize, we will have two,” he warned.
“One of the policies we are calculating right now is a massive increase in tariffs on Chinese products entering the United States,” he added.
In his first term (2017-2021), Trump started a tariff war with China, which was maintained by his successor, Joe Biden (2021-2025), and intensified when the Republican returned to the White House, in January of this year.
After the Trump administration imposed extra tariffs on imports from China, Beijing retaliated, leading to an escalation in duties. The United States raised tariffs on purchases made from China to 145%, while the Chinese applied 125% to American products.
In May, after a meeting between representatives of the two countries in Geneva, the world’s two largest economies reported that they had reached an agreement in which American tariffs on imports from China were reduced to 30% for 90 days, while Beijing lowered its tariffs on American products to 10%. In August, the “truce” was renewed for another 90 days.
Trump and Xi spoke by phone on September 18, when they approved a preliminary agreement to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States and at that time agreed to meet in late October in South Korea, during the APEC leaders’ summit.
