After United States Imposes Tariffs On China, China Retaliates With Penalties Of Its Own
As Connecting the Dots reported last week, while the Trump administration delayed putting in place tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico for one month, it did move forward with 10 percent penalties on products from China. The tariffs apply to all goods entered for consumption, withdrawn from a warehouse for consumption, on or after midnight on February 4, 2025. As a reminder, these tariffs are levied in addition to existing penalties, including the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum products from China, that also currently in place.
President Donald Trump cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose these levies. In contrast to the situation with the Section 232 tariffs and other trade penalties, as the law firm Holland and Knight advised, “there is no apparent mechanism for applying for exclusions to the [IEEPA] tariffs.” No U.S. President has used IEEPA to impose tariffs in this fashion.
It also is important to understand that, as part of President Donald Trump’s order putting in place the tariffs, effective Feb. 4, 2025, de minimis entry is no longer available for imports from China, which include virtually all products of China and Hong Kong. That suspension will remain in effect as long as the 10 percent tariff does. Read more about this suspension at this link.
As expected, the Chinese government retaliated almost immediately to the U.S. tariffs, launching export controls on five key metals used by U.S. defense, clean energy, and other industries. Specifically, as USA Today explained, after banning exports of gallium, germanium, and antimony in December, China is now restricting exports of tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum, and indium by requiring licenses to export products related to the minerals. The Chinese government also imposed 15 percent duties on U.S. coal and liquefied natural gas and 10 percent duties on crude oil, agricultural machinery, large-displacement vehicles, and pickup trucks.