Beijing threatens countermeasures against countries that ‘appease’ Washington in trade war

China has warned it will take “resolute and reciprocal” countermeasures against other countries negotiating with the US if they make a deal at China’s expense during the trade war.
China’s commerce ministry was responding to recent news reports that Donald Trump planned to pressure other countries to limit their trade with China in return for tariff exemptions. Beijing and the US are locked in an escalating trade war, running separately to the US’s efforts to rewrite trade deals with the rest of the world.
“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests,” the ministry said on Monday.
“Appeasement will not bring peace, and compromise will not be respected … To seek one’s own temporary selfish interests at the expense of others’ interests is to seek the skin of a tiger.”
That approach, it warned, “will ultimately fail on both ends and harm others”.
Tit-for-tat tariffs between the US and China have reached 145% on Chinese exports to the US and 125% on US exports to China. Trump’s tariffs on China are the highest of the global tariffs he announced for all US trading partners as part of his so-called “liberation day” campaign to make trading relationships more favourable to the US and bring more manufacturing on to US soil.
This month, as the US appeared destined for a recession, Trump announced a 90-day pause of the higher tariffs, reducing all countries to a blanket 10% – except China.

Some countries are engaged in negotiations with the US to lower or remove tariffs before the 90-day deadline. Reporting in the last week has suggested that Trump’s team intends to use those negotiations for its trade war with China. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg have both cited US official saying the US was preparing to pressure those nations to curb their own trade with China or impose monetary sanctions.
“If such a situation occurs, China will never accept it and will resolutely take reciprocal countermeasures,” China’s commerce ministry said.
Responding to the reports on Saturday, Rachel Reeves, the UK chancellor, dismissed the idea that the UK would economically disengage from China.
“Well, China is the second biggest economy in the world, and it would be, I think, very foolish to not engage,” Reeves told the Telegraph. “That’s the approach of this government.”
Trump said on Thursday that the US was in talks with China on tariffs, adding that he was confident the world’s largest economies could make a deal to end the bitter trade war.
“Yeah, we’re talking to China,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I would say they have reached out a number of times.
“I think we’re going to make a very good deal with China.”
China has vowed to fight a trade war “to the end” and has not confirmed that it is in talks with Washington, though it has called for dialogue. Chinese officials have said the US need to show greater respect,
It has strongly criticised what it calls “unilateralism and protectionism” by the US – and warned about an international order reverting to the “law of the jungle”.
“Where the strong prey on the weak, all countries will become victims,” Beijing said on Monday. (The Guardian)