President Donald Trump has dismissed concerns about his trade war with China escalating beyond the exchange of eye-watering tariffs, alluding to a cache of “the most powerful weapons in the world.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Chinese embassy in Washington for comment via email.
Why It Matters
The Trump administration’s raft of tariffs has been wide-ranging, but have singled out China above all others.
The Republican president on Thursday announced a three-month reprieve on extensive “reciprocal” tariffs unveiled at the start of April, excluding China. The universal 10 percent tariff remained in place, but global financial markets quickly jumped after Trump’s proclamation. The president had insisted earlier this week he had no intention of pausing tariffs.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Trump hiked the 104 percent tariffs on China to 125 percent on Wednesday after Beijing hit back at the U.S. with an 84 percent additional levy earlier in the day.
The 125 percent tariff came into force “immediately,” Trump said in a post to social media.
China’s commerce ministry said earlier this week it would “fight to the end” against the “blackmailing nature of the U.S.”
What To Know
Speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said he was “not concerned” about the economic conflict with China escalating further, calling Chinese President Xi Jinping “one of the very smart people of the world.”
“I don’t think he would allow that to happen,” Trump said. The U.S. is “far more powerful than people understand,” he added.
“We have weaponry that nobody has any idea what it is and it is the most powerful weapons in the world that we have,” Trump told reporters. “So nobody is going to do that.”
It is not clear what the president referred to with these remarks.
Trump told the media he believed Beijing and Washington would “end up making a very good deal” beneficial to both countries. In his remarks posted to social media, the president said more than 75 countries had reached out to U.S. authorities to “negotiate a solution” to tariffs and “have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States.”
The head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said in a statement on Wednesday that the “tit-for-tat approach” between Beijing and Washington could “severely damage the global economic outlook.”
U.S. security and defense officials have for years deemed China the “pacing challenge” to Washington, while the Trump administration has overtly signaled its intentions of pulling U.S. military attention from Europe to focus more squarely on the Indo-Pacific.
What People Are Saying
Trump said in a post to the Truth Social platform on Wednesday: “At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.”
What Happens Next
It isn’t clear how far the world’s two largest economies will go in their trade war, with the WTO predicting that goods trade between the two countries could plunge by up to 80 percent.
Update 4/10/2025 at 4:16 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
