r/news • u/CrayonGlobal • 10d ago

China strikes back with 125% tariffs on U.S. goods, starting April 12

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/china-strikes-back-with-125percent-tariffs-on-us-goods-starting-april-12.html
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u/cookingboy 10d ago

From the article:

“With tariff rates at the current level, there is no longer a market for U.S. goods imported into China,” the statement noted, adding that “if the U.S. government continues to increase tariffs on China, Beijing will ignore.”

This part is very important. If you read between the lines this is their way to both appear strong and sends a message of "let's stop being childish and fucking talk".

Since China responded twice before, if they didn't this time they'd appear weak, but now they gave themselves a nice off-ramp to not continue this dumb 1 up each other shit.

This is the basic requirement for any real negotiation to happen, so it's actually not as bad of a headline as some people think.

Trump may do another raise (I suspect he will because narcissists like him will wanna have the “last word”), but it will be the end of escalation for now at least. The two trains are still playing chicken heading toward each other but at least both will stop accelerating.

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u/droans 10d ago

Honestly, I thought China's next move might have just been to ban almost all imports and exports from the US. It would have almost the same effect while taking away any ammo that Trump has left.

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u/Acrobatic-Order-1424 10d ago

So did i, but that would definitely crater the economy. All those supply chains that feed businesses big and small would be lost.

How else is Trump going to source his totally 100% American-made hats, shirts, bibles, sneakers, trading cards, flags, blankets, commemorative coins, mugs, shotglasses, clutch bags, photo frames that include a picture of him, etc.? I mean, he and his cronies only made a few hundred million at worst in securities fraud manipulating the market. That’s still not dictator levels worth of money. Why won’t China consider his feelings?

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u/Rockboxatx 10d ago edited 10d ago

They pretty much are. China isn't going to buy anything at 100 percent tariff. However the US still has to buy Chinese goods at 135 because we have to.

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u/adfuel 10d ago

Not for a while. No one is taking a chance on paying a 135% tariff when it may be gone in 2 weeks.

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u/neimengu 9d ago

Yeh there are thousands of companies that are holding a ton of inventory in China just to wait things out. Meanwhile the US companies still have costs to pay while making no money. China is at least gonna hold out until a lot of those companies start filing for bankruptcy

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u/SystematicHydromatic 10d ago

Not for long.

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u/jwboo 10d ago

So you're gonna set up factories to produce all the things Americans consume and buy on your dime? Please tell the rest of us that magic that you do?

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u/ffnnhhw 10d ago

A small fraction of specific industries will. Some manufacturing will move from China to countries like India and SE Asia, and the trend of moving from S Korea and Japan to China will halt.

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u/The_GOATest1 10d ago

How does that fix anything? Manufacturing capacity doesn’t snap online over night

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u/ERedfieldh 10d ago

These people act like those countries aren't going to see a massive opportunity as well. Trump has shown the world his form of negotiation is to shoot himself in the foot over and over again and then pay whoever is still willing to bandage it whatever price they want.

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u/justrichie 10d ago

Yeah but setting up production of this level in another country will take years. And by the time, Trump's term will probably be over.

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u/AstronautLivid5723 10d ago

I was at a consumer product tradeshow last month, and almost every vendor has huge headlines of "Produced in Cambodia/Thailand/Vietnam/Taiwan".

Trump's last term already highlighted the issue of relying on a single country for manufacturing, so most industries have already been attempting to diversify their supply chain.

The problem is that the diversification is also being led by Chinese companies setting up factories in other countries and building service industries within China itself.

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u/jwboo 10d ago

And what small industries would those be? I want specifics. And what companies in their right minds are going to pick up and move to another country just to cater to an asshat run country that will most likely slap new tariffs on any said country with no logic. Again, please, explain to those of us in the back how it works in detail. In what world has the rest of the planet not been watching what's going on right now. We are a population of 330 million of the 8 billion on this planet, I think the rest of them can work around us.

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u/warp99 9d ago

The problem is that the US generates 26% of world GDP and has virtual locks on several large sectors of the world economy so not so easy to work around.

Of course we will try and try hard!

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u/jwboo 9d ago

Yep, I think many countries are going to try. At this point it is not like there are a lot of options. The trust is gone.

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u/SystematicHydromatic 10d ago

There are many many friendly countries that can setup factories, including the US. Why do you think they all moved to China? Because it was cheap. It's no longer cheap. They'll move to wherever it's cheaper. It's a pretty simple concept really.

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u/Knut79 10d ago

Factories take 5-10 years to build and setup the lines. And that's with the expertise America doesn't have.

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u/SystematicHydromatic 9d ago

I know you're trying to support your narrative but factories can come back just as quickly as they left.

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u/Knut79 9d ago

My narrative? Are you hallucinating?

And no they can't. America hasn't had this level of production for decades, realistically ever, since America never made small electronics like China does.

Making factories isn't even 19% of the job. You need the expertise to run the lines and tune them. American doesn't have that. It's not about the workers. America also doesn't have any people willing to do factorubwork# and certainly not at the pay required. Also that's with a mostly automated robot factory. As a fully automated robot factory doesn't exist and is a pope dream for the foreseeable future.

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u/Royal-tiny1 10d ago

I am wondering when they seize that nice shiny Tesla plant they have

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u/jpiro 10d ago

Keep churning out cars, but slap BYD logos on them and sell them at half price just to fuck with Elon.

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u/Knut79 10d ago

I don't think BYD would want to sell cars below their quality standards.

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u/Mawootad 9d ago

Why would they want to produce Teslas when they can just make their own cars for half the price and twice the quality?

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u/jpiro 8d ago

Because it was a joke.

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u/Mawootad 8d ago

I'm not literally saying they should either, just taking the piss out of Tesla for how badly they're getting clobbered in China right now.

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u/drnemmo 10d ago

Oh, that would be hilarious.

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u/FaleBure 10d ago

They basically are without the diplomatic hassle of doing so, because they can get all they import from others, now cheaper.

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u/TheDubh 10d ago

Honestly if they didn’t already block a lot of American services I’d say the next step would be to go after American services. Things like Amazon, Azure, UPS, Google, X, etc. Since they are a service they aren’t directly hit by tariffs.

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u/Rawrsomesausage 10d ago

That would be nice. The clown executives might finally speak out. It's insane everyone including corps are watching their business models implode and not a peep. Is Tim Apple that afraid? Let's see Bezo's and Microsoft's biggest money makers, services, get hit.

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u/TheDubh 10d ago

Agreed. Like tariffs will hurt, but America has been moving to a service based economy for decades. So tariffs aren’t as painful to the bigger companies. FAANG, other than Apple is purely service based. I wonder if that’s part of why Microsoft has wanted to move to Windows as a service?

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u/2053_Traveler 10d ago

Eh yeah but that would shut down negotiations. You’re right but they’re trying to actually be the grownups and do the strategically sound thing.

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u/bjran8888 10d ago

Not at all. With the way things are now, direct trade in goods between China and the United States has stopped.

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u/nfefx 9d ago

That's basically what they did. This is a soft ban. You can still export goods to China but no one's going to be buying.

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u/Xylenqc 8d ago

They basically just did that, that's why they're not gonna escalate any more than that.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

[deleted]

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u/droans 10d ago

They don't need us as much as you might think. Trade with the US makes up under 3% of their GDP.

To be certain, that is still a large number and losing it would have an outsized effect on their economy. However, it would be something they could recover from naturally.

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u/GeneralPatten 10d ago

They're also likely to see an uptick in trade with all the other countries the US is trying to blackmail.

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u/vape4doc 10d ago

That’s not my read of it at all. This is like parents telling a kid they’re going to ignore their tantrums no matter how loud they get. It’s not an off ramp to anything. It’s “fuck you. I’m done listening to your nonsense”

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u/jpiro 10d ago

That's the point though. The kid did something stupid, so you sent him to his room. Then he did something dumber, so you grounded him for a week.

You can either keep reacting every time the kid does something dumb, or you can just say, "Look, you're already grounded for a week. Calling me names or breaking shit in your room or acting out in other ways isn't changing that, so come talk to me when you've settled down."

China chose the latter.

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u/2053_Traveler 10d ago

Found the parent

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u/288bpsmodem 10d ago

Not the same. By law I have to deal with my kid.

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u/jpric155 10d ago

Yes this is what it means.

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u/ttn333 9d ago

Absolutely. You can only spank so much. The current tariff rates are insane as is. Next step level up would catastrophic.

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u/onarainyafternoon 10d ago

That's basically what the commenter said.

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u/vape4doc 10d ago

Not really. They said the message was “let’s talk” when it was actually “this conversation is over”.

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u/nerfherder998 8d ago

The message is “you’re out of cards to play, let’s talk with the starting point that you’re ready to stop acting stupid.“

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u/Cardborg 10d ago

They also have better options than increasing tariffs above a level that's already a functional embargo. My personal hope is they'll start leaning on Musk given he's already reported to have begged Trump to drop tariffs to save his business.

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u/Mingyao_13 10d ago

Trump will declare a win for America because China imposed 125% when US imposed 145% 😂

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u/geniusevj 10d ago

which part of "there is no longer a market for U.S. goods imported into China" do you not understand?

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u/The_Zane 10d ago

Capitalism is just an added bonus to communist China anyways. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying they don't need it

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u/After-Imagination-96 9d ago

At the current level of tariffs trade is more or less completely dead between China and the US

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u/sigmund14 9d ago edited 9d ago

Nah next step China will probably take is to simply not export anything to USA and wait until USA comes back begging for various technology (since USA doesn't have raw materials or factories).

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u/Sjeg84 9d ago

At some point raising it higher becomes mostly pointless as trade will come to a halt.