United States President Donald Trump on Friday said he was willing to slap extra tariffs on all Chinese imports worth around $505 billion (more than Rs 34.75 lakh crore).
Trump said the US had been being taken advantage of by China for a long time. “I’m not doing this for politics,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC. “I’m doing this to do the right thing for our country. We have been ripped off by China for too long.”
While Chinese imports to the US were worth $505.5 billion in 2017, US exports to the Asian giant are worth only $129.9 billion (more than Rs 8.94 lakh crore), said data from the Census Bureau.
Trump’s comments come in the wake of a growing rift between the two biggest economies. China on Thursday said that US claims of President Xi Jinping blocking talks with the US over the trade war were “false”, Bloomberg reported. White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow said that Xi did not want to agree to trade with the US.
In the first week of July, the US and China engaged in a trade war, imposing tariffs worth $34 billion (Rs 23,454 crore) on each other’s reports. Beijing had accused Washington of triggering the “largest-scale trade war”.
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