Name: China raises tariffs on US goods to 125% as trade war ramps up | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-04-12T09:41:39.000Z
Duration: 6 min 45 s
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European stock markets have opened slightly higher in the past hour.

The main indexes in the UK, Germany, Spain and France all gained between 0.3% and 0.7%.

On Thursday they registered their steepest one-day percentage gain since 2022.

Uncertainty about President Trump's tariffs again affecting markets there.

Many investors are turning to gold, considered a safe investment.

Its price hit a record high on Friday there.

The trade war between the world's two largest economies, the US and China, has intensified with Washington confirming taxes of up to 145% on Beijing, which has responded with 84% tariffs of its own.

Mr. Trump told his cabinet on Thursday that a period of difficult transition was inevitable but insisted investors were happy.

There will always be transition difficulty but we had a, in history it was the biggest day in history, the markets.

So we're very very happy with the way the country is running.

Again there'll be a transition cost and transition problems but in the end it's going to be, it's going to be a beautiful thing.

Well our correspondent Stephen McDonough explained how the government in Beijing was reacting to the tariffs.

Well you know Donald Trump has now said that actually the tariff on Chinese goods is at 145%.

The reason we're not going to get much of a response from the Chinese government to this is that at this point it doesn't matter.

You know once you go past 100% tariffs on Chinese goods, it could be 200%, it could be 300%, it's all the same because you're past 100% and it's already prohibitively high in terms of China selling goods into the US.

So what this is seen as here is just a bit of bluster from Donald Trump.

You know he's stamping his feet because Xi Jinping won't talk to him.

Well guess what Xi Jinping is doing while he's ignoring Donald Trump?

Today he sat down with the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

Next week he travels to Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam.

These are all countries hit hard by Donald Trump's tariffs.

You've got China's Communist Minister speaking to their opposite numbers in South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

We've got the Indian ambassador speaking to a vice premier here, also talking about China-India relations and on top of this China and the EU are apparently in talks to remove tariffs on Chinese cars going into Europe and replacing this with a sort of base price instead.

What this all shows you is that China has options and really Donald Trump has misled his followers by saying all I gotta do is whack these tariffs on China and Beijing will cave in in a heartbeat.

Well I think the Chinese government has shown that is not going to happen.

And some breaking news coming in from Beijing now where Stephen McDonnell was speaking to us from which is that the government is to raise additional tariffs on US goods to a hundred and twenty five percent.

So initially it had talks of tariffs of eighty four percent.

The updates now from the Chinese government is that it's going to raise tariffs on US goods to a hundred and twenty five percent.

Well we can now bring in our Asia business correspondent Mariko Oi.

Mariko what's your reaction to that news from Beijing?

Well I think it'll be interesting to see how the European stock markets react to that breaking news.

Obviously the trading trade war between the world's two biggest economies has been escalating every day but this is the latest twist Beijing raising its territory tariffs to over a hundred percent basically meaning that any companies having to import would have to pay more than double.

So many analysts have been telling us that these tariffs are so high that it's almost impossible for any businesses making products and trying to sell them in each other's countries to make a profit.

So I think it's fair to say that the damage to bilateral trade between the world's two biggest economy is pretty much almost done.

The question has been among investors whether Beijing would resort to other measures to retaliate.

There are of course extreme measures as well as not so extreme measures.

You know there were rumors of Beijing possibly banning the imports for example of Hollywood movies.

So we'll continue to monitor whether there will be other measures as well but definitely this is further escalation of the trade tension and it'll be interesting to see how those European markets which as you said have opened flat to higher will react to it.

And just some more information coming in from those Chinese tariffs.

The government said that those tariffs will come into effect from Saturday.

So those higher tariffs of 125 percent on U.S. goods to China now expected to come into effect on Saturday.

Mariko the expectation was that these two countries will get to a point where perhaps it would have negotiations that this trade war will come to an end.

Well I think many analysts were saying that Beijing wouldn't want to be seen to be the weak one in this trade war and therefore they would not back down.

Some were also saying that when the Chinese government starts quoting Mao Zedong that really shows that they're not going to back down.

They're going to fight this trade war to the end as they have said previously.

And I think even if they were to sit at that negotiating table in the near future some analysts were saying that they would try their best to damage the U.S. economy before they actually get to that negotiating table so they can start at a much stronger position.

So and global stock markets have been reacting to all these latest twists and turns in this trade war especially between the world's two biggest economies.

And it has been an incredible incredibly volatile week for Asian markets.

Of course they have mostly closed for trading today.

We saw some losses even more as Japan's Nikkei 225 as you said ending the day about 3 percent lower though some markets like Taiwan which was one of the biggest losers they actually managed to rise.

So it's not as a sharp sell off that we saw earlier in the week but they have been quite a lot of wild swings in the stock market.

That's our Asia business correspondence Mariko Oi in Singapore there.

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China raises tariffs on US goods to 125% as trade war ramps up | BBC News

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