The President-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, therefore fired his first salvo towards China. He announced Monday, November 25 – eight weeks before his inauguration on January 20 – that he will impose a 10% customs duty on Chinese products. The world’s largest exporter sees this as confirmation of Mr. Trump’s hostility towards it, but is waiting for the facts, the Republican having also promised during the campaign to tax his products at 60%. Beijing also notes that the 47th American president has announced higher customs taxes, of 25%, on imports from Mexico and Canada, and can therefore consider not to be the primary target for the moment. “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war,” replied the spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu. China is, in reality, struggling to read the republican’s intentions. The series of announcements of appointments made by Donald Trump since his election does not help to clarify the picture. On Tuesday, November 26, he chose business lawyer Jamieson Greer as trade representative, who worked alongside his predecessor and very protectionist Robert Lighthizer. He and other supporters of rebalancing for trade and employment will coexist with politicians much more ideologically opposed to China, including the likely Secretary of State Marco Rubio, obsessed with the very existence of the Chinese communist regime. They will also have to collaborate with men who are much more “business as usual”, including the future Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund boss, or the man richest in the world, Elon Musk, who have an interest in a form of stability. Proximity with the Brazilian president China expects to find a bit of all these factions in Donald Trump’s positions. She is much better prepared than she was at the dawn of her first mandate (2017-2021). She has already experienced his particularly destabilizing strategy of shock and uncertainty, and noted that he did not derail her economy during his first four years in power. Since then, Chinese President Xi Jinping has continued to emphasize the quest for “scientific and technological autonomy”. The restrictions imposed against Huawei in 2019 led the telecoms champion to do without Google’s Android operating software to develop its own, Harmony, present in an improved version in a new smartphone launched on Tuesday, November 26. Joe Biden’s administration then blocked Chinese groups’ access to the latest generation electronic chips engraved by the Taiwanese semiconductor giant, TSMC, but a competing supplier from Shanghai, SMIC, is now reducing the qualitative gap . You have 41.33% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
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Faced with Trump’s threats, China prepared for shock despite its fragilities
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